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IDEALS OF AMERICA 



Ideals of America 



Analyses of the guiding motives of contem- 
porary American life by leaders in 
various fields of thought 
and action. 



PREPARED FOR THE 

CITY CLUB OF CHICAGO 
1916-1919 




CHICAGO 
A. C McCLURG & CO. 

1919 



.6 6- 



Copyright 
A. C. McCLURG & CO. 

1919 



Published October, 1919 



OCT 20 1919 



W. F. HALL PRINTrNG COMPANY, CHICAGO 



©CI.A53f^275 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 
I Can America's Ideal Be Consciously Shaped ? 

by George Ellsworth Hooker .... I 
II Ideals in Politics by Frederick D. Bramhall 1 1 

III Ideals in Law by John Bradley Winslow . 39 

IV Ideals in Labor by John P. Frey .... 85 
V Ideals of Science by John Merle Coulter . 107 

VI Ideals in Education by Ernest Carroll Moore 131 
VII Ideals in Business by Arthur E. Swanson . 165 
VIII Ideals in " Society" by Elsie Clews Parsons 181 
IX Ideals in Music by Edward Dickinson . . 207 
X Ideals in Religion by George Albert Coe . . 239 
XI Ideals in Philosophy by Harry Allen Over- 
street 263 

XII Ideals in Literature by Robert Morss Lovett 295 
XIII Human Progress by Allen B. Pond . . .311 



INTRODUCTION 



AN ERA ended In July, 19 14. A civilization 
^ reached its conclusion. We are now far 
enough away to begin to see its affairs in per- 
spective. Nineteen hundred and fourteen is de- 
tached from the present. The year so recent has 
begun to take Its place with 1896, 1861, and 
even with 1775. This almost immediate past Is 
already becoming as alien to us as are the epochs 
we have learned through the written chronicles 
of the past. What Is ahead we cannot say with 
assuredness, although the rude outlines of the 
future are visible now to the clear-eyed as objects 
perceived in the semllight of approaching dawn. 
At such a season of transition it Is, accordingly, 
especially valuable to attempt to take stock so 
that thereby we may cooperate with destiny In 
achieving a more satisfactory society. 

With this purpose In mind during the early 
months of the Great War, George E. Hooker, 
then civic secretary of the City Club of Chicago, 
conceived the Idea of bringing together leaders 
distinguished In many fields and of obtaining 
from them statements of the dominant Ideals In 



vii 



VIU 



Introduction 



their respective spheres of attention. At different 
times, from 191 6 to 19 19, these various contribu- 
tions have been produced. The goal constantly 
in view has been the cutting of cross-sections 
through several departments of life so that the 
truly significant motives might be exposed to 
useful consideration. Representative individuals 
have united thus in the endeavor to interpret the 
America which saw the initiation of the supreme 
conflict. They have spoken calmly — with detach- 
ment — for, with three exceptions, the chapters 
in this book were produced before Germany com- 
pelled the United States to enter the struggle. 
The horror of militarist-materialist imperialism 
was even then overshadowing the spirit of man, 
but the friendly objectivity of the scientific ob- 
server was still an attainable attitude In America. 

As the originator of the idea of this congerie 
of efforts to picture the America that was, it is 
wholly fit that Mr. Hooker should himself pro- 
duce the first general chapter. He has done this 
briefly and with felicity. Himself the civic re- 
former par excellence^ he has centered his thought 
on the ideals, "the paramount wishes," of yes- 
terday in the constructive effort toward the better 
shaping of America's true and fitting Ideal. 

Professor Bramhall of the Department of Po- 
litical Science, University of Chicago, has Illumi- 
nated In his essay the field of American political 



Introductio?i ix 



ideals as he finds them arrayed at the beginning 
of the postwar era. He expresses the frank dis- 
appointment of many thoughtful Americans with 
the functioning of the " democratic" system in the 
industrial society of today, the disparity between 
the ideals of democracy and the facts of American 
life. " Democracy is an assurance neither of wis- 
dom nor virtue in our day; but it is the best hope 
that we have of their gradual emergence." Pro- 
fessor Bramhall analyzes the forces which have 
made the American citizen essentially a " rou- 
tineer" In politics and a worshiper of political 
dogma. On the other hand, he points out the 
many tendencies away from the earlier tradition. 
Tentativeness and plasticity, he says, are the 
characteristics of present-day American polit- 
ical thinking. " If we have courage," he con- 
cludes, " to trust the democratic method of 
growth and change toward democratic ideals, 
the patriot and the humanitarian may still be 
optimists." 

Chief Justice Winslow of the Supreme Court 
of Wisconsin in his chapter has traced the opposi- 
tion, as registered in the law, between the old 
Idea of Individualistic liberty and the new concept 
of social freedom. With mastery he has re- 
counted the meaningful readjustments which help 
to explain our ante-bellum civilization. Real 
equality of citizenship, not the hypothetical equal- 



Introduction 



ity before the law proclaimed in an age of less 
complicated economics was, to Judge Winslow, 
the ideal coming into sovereignty during the years 
comprehended by his scrutiny. 

John P. Frey, editor of the International Mol- 
ders^ Journal^ and conspicuous in the intellectual 
leadership of the American labor movement, is 
responsible for the exceedingly able account of 
the ideals leading the workers' unions during the 
generation under observation. The drift toward 
equality which Judge Winslow saw in the de- 
cisions of courts, becomes in the field of toil the 
concrete human longing for liberty, equality, fra- 
ternity. 

Dean Swanson of the Northwestern University 
School of Commerce took up the narrative from 
the standpoint of domestic business. He traced 
the intermingling of antagonistic motives in the 
commercial world with the gradual obsolescence 
of the caveat-emptor standard in favor of the 
ideal of social responsibility. Thus he outlined 
the obverse side of the human situation handled 
by Mr. Frey. 

Mrs. Parsons also is in contrast to Mr. Frey. 
She held up for inspection that phenomenon of 
American life suggested by the term '' society." 
In a scintillant analysis, Mrs. Parsons pointed to 
the new democratization, new fearlessness, and 
new freedom which tend to transform that old 



Introduction xi 



exclusive group which arrogated to its own pur- 
poses the very word which binds all the race — 
society. 

As the application of the scientific method has 
supplied the data which are disintegrating the 
older aristocracies, so an examination of the ideals 
of science itself is of assistance in appraising the 
past as well as in the proper effort to determine 
the probable future. Professor John M. Coulter 
does this from the vantage ground of botany. 
Science, or the scientific method, it may be noted, 
is one of the human products whose worth has 
not been influenced by the war. Its position, de- 
spite the revolution which is smashing civilization 
and building a new order, is still commanding. 
The ideas, which In themselves constitute the 
scientific method, are, moreover, to be grasped 
in many various places. 

Along that pathway of mankind called " educa- 
tion,'* Professor Ernest C. Moore, following 
Mr. Coulter's more general statement, made his 
unifying collection. Professor Moore Is very 
definitely a modern teacher. He Is a prophet in 
that school, one of whose acknowledged leaders 
is Professor John Dewey. Professor Moore as- 
sembled the ideals of the diverse bands of teachers 
and threw the energy of his approval behind those 
purposes which through the classroom make for 
the same socialized liberty, the same democracy 



xii Introduction 



of free men and free women glimpsed by other 
contributors through their sundry special avenues 
of approach. To Professor Moore there is but 
one authentic ideal of education. It is the process 
by which each child of the race, guided by his own 
interest, employing his own attention and using 
his own mind in comprehending the process of 
human living, becomes a person who thinks, de- 
sires, and acts as the embodiment of social laws. 

Music in many phases manifests within itself 
the same aspirations for a more complete partici- 
pation by the great majority in the pleasant activi- 
ties of civilization. Music, furthermore, In 
education and in the wider community, has of 
late proved itself to be an agency of expression 
which both set free the noble emotions of the 
individual and supplied the impulse necessary to 
coordinate our socially inchoate communities. 
Professor Dickinson described persuasively the 
role this art assumed in the erection of a new 
and fairer democracy. 

The events of the world struggle have induced 
many to look to religion In the hope that there 
solace might remain. Some have moved onward, 
saying to themselves with Professor Coe, "re- 
ligion that supposed itself to be a monotheism 
of universal human significance turns out to be 
a collection of national religions each with Its 
own god of war." That realization comes some- 



Introduction 



times as an occasion of despair. But Professor 
Coe's eloquent and open-minded consideration 
of the state of religion affords grounds for a 
courageous trust in what is to be. The dogma of 
the brotherhood of man, so Influential In political 
and social theory of the last generations, Is a 
direct quotation from religion. Evidences that 
religion will fuse this revolutionary principle Into 
human relations — social and International — are 
not wanting. Professor Coe for himself says 
bravely, " I bow my spirit before the spirit of the 
world democracy that Is to be." 

The humble posture assumed by the open- 
minded prophets of religion as they gaze upon 
humanity Is paralleled by a similar reverence In 
philosophy. Professor Harry Allen Overstreet 
of New York thus maps the wanderings of philos- 
ophy in America and Indicates the lines of devel- 
opment. Philosophy, keeping pace with the 
mutations of the world which produced and 
cherished It, has, like the arts and sciences, dis- 
covered the dignity of man In the mass and sought 
to lend Its great stimulus to the furtherance of 
the democratic process. 

In his brilliant and wise essay Robert Morss 
Lovett reveals the play of the democratic tend- 
ency in literature. The dominant Ideals of 
literature are of the stuff of the forces trans- 
forming education or revolutionizing Industry 



xiv Introduction 



and government. " The so-called degradation of 
literature, and the loss of Its Ideals," said Dean 
Lovett, "are due to the democratic demand that 
It shall serve the uses, not of the few, but of the 
many." Literature has lost "the obsession of 
eternity " and has been vulgarized while our cul- 
ture, with universal education, has become literary. 
Yet literature Is still a fine art. In truth it may 
be questioned whether literature as a superior 
aesthetic achievement " was not always, except In 
cases of sheer Imitation, the unsought result of 
an unfathomable combination of the Maker's soul 
with that of His fellow-men — only whereas In 
the past It was only the souls of the few who 
counted, today It Is the soul of democracy." Dean 
Lovett sees no loss In this. The writer is still the 
artist. "Naturalism, impressionism, symbolism, 
Imagism, mysticism, come and go — a dust of sys- 
tems and of creeds. It is hard to predict which 
devices among so many will survive the day 
which called them forth. Only this is certain, 
the true aesthetic cannot be Imposed from without 
by individual caprice or vision, nor can It be re- 
covered from the past by study. The laws of 
beauty were not given along with the Ten Com- 
mandments. The true aesthetic Is the result of 
human need, human aspiration, human agony. 
It cannot be complete unless It takes account of 
the human experience of the entire race, In which 



Introduction 



today for the first time in the world's story the 
soul of man is tragically one." 

Fuially after all these confessions the question 
still remains: Is there such a thing as human 
progress? 

Allen B. Pond, a former president of the City 
Club, under whose auspices this assemblage of 
essays was prepared, has made answer to that 
ancient problem. With his forceful reasoning 
this volume is ended. 

William L. Chenery. 



L 



Can America's Ideal Be Consciously Shaped? 



Ideals of America 



CAN AMERICA'S IDEAL BE 
CONSCIOUSLY SHAPED? 

By George Ellsworth Hooker, Civic Secretary City 
Club of Chicago, igo8-iQ 

A PEOPLE, like an Individual, needs a con- 
scious and dominant ideal to evoke its 
powers, to Integrate its efforts and to sustain Its 
course against lethargy, illusion, and gusts of tem- 
porary emotion. A people should be ever striving 
to perceive more and more clearly and define for 
Itself more and more perfectly what Its true ideal 
Is, In order thus to press more and more success- 
fully toward its realization. To satisfy the human 
mind this guiding motive must be not only a 
broad and inclusive one, but a great upbuilding 
conception making for human development. 

The terrible European drama, and events 
leading up to It, illustrates as does perhaps no 
other situation in history, the organizing and 



Ideals of America 



energizing power over entire peoples of a domi- 
nant purpose. It is hardly an overstatement to 
say that in half a dozen European nations the 
idea of trial at arms has for years or generations 
dictated social legislation and commercial, indus- 
trial, and civic policies, as well as military and 
naval budgets. It has beckoned international 
finance, guided diplomacy, and marshaled the so- 
called balance of power. It has integrated both 
national and international policy. Its story marks 
in a striking way the power of a ruling aim. 

The notion of physical mastery as between 
nations has never been a dominant idea and thus 
a consolidating influence among our people. Our 
social life has not been shaped and energized by 
a military program. But what equivalent have 
we as an actuating and molding popular force? 
Are we as a nation moved by or committed to 
any creative and absorbing conception of social 
advance capable of vitalizing and really organiz- 
ing us for human progress? It is not suggested 
that we have had no conspicuous American ideas, 
shaping important lines of individual and social 
conduct; but have we today as a nation any great 
human policy giving conscious direction and co- 
hesion to our life as a whole, so that it could 
truthfully be called our ideal? In so far as we 
are for "preparedness" have we in mind any 



Can America's Ideal Be Shaped? 3 

ultimate human attainment which we plan to se- 
cure thereby? In so far as we object to militarism 
are we essentially objectors — playing a negative 
and thus a necessarily weak role? Have we a 
yardstick by which to measure and compare both 
policies? In this confused world situation, out 
of which will come the watchwords of tomorrow, 
have we any positive and dominating idealism, 
verified in our experience or even delineated in 
our faith, which, as an affirmative aim, we can 
offer to others or invoke for our own guidance? 

There certainly exists in many minds a distinct, 
not to say alarmed, feeling that as a people we 
have no such mastering aim; that Instead our 
active life Is marked by disorder and drift, rather 
than by organization and design; that we lack 
coordinated and directed movement; that the 
events of our social existence happen as a vast 
medley, rather than as consecutive parts of an 
intelligently laid plan, moving forward In stages 
of Intended and far-sighted advance. This dis- 
organization In action — wasting effort and re- 
tarding progress — betrays a prior moral drift, 
to which It is due. We lack clear convictions as 
to what the proper ends of society are — and this 
lack necessarily precludes a unified and progres- 
sive social life directed toward the attainment 
of such ends. This Is true also not merely In the 
degree to which life's ends always tend to elude 



Ideals of America 



definition, but in an unusual degree. There is an 
unusual sense of society's being without compass 
or goal. There Is a peculiar feeling of bafflement 
at events as they crowd upon and against each 
other. There is a special sense of need for some 
adequate and up-to-date summation of our domi- 
nant conclusions about life, which summation 
might unify and enlist us for its logical program 
of action. 

The urgency of this need Is deepened by the 
unparalleled forces now awaiting release for 
social welfare. The powers of mind and matter 
ready in this age to be organized toward high 
and worthy objects are of unprecedented scope 
and content. The present-day economic and in- 
tellectual revolution has opened the door of human 
possibility wider than it ever was opened before. 
The resources of modern enterprise imply a 
rewriting of the aims of human society with the 
use of a new scale and a new faith. 

The present is a fit time for this constructive 
effort by reason of the stage now reached In the 
modern transition period. May we not regard 
the current revolution In thought and belief, which 
has resulted from that In science and Industry, as 
having run Its necessarily negative and destructive 
course sufficiently far so that the rebuilding proc- 
ess may now safely proceed, and proceed in a 



Can America s Ideal Be Shaped? 5 

strong and efficient manner? Has not the ground 
been sufficiently cleared, has not adequate con- 
structive material been accumulated, have not our 
minds been sufficiently liberated, have we not 
suffered enough the ills of divisive negation, so 
that the task of erecting the new symbols of posi- 
tive social purpose may now be wisely and advan- 
tageously begun in a systematic manner? 

The war too, argues for such new guideposts. 
The economic upheaval overspreading the world, 
the shattering of conventions which has taken 
place, the break-up of religious and political no- 
tions, the disclosure of concealed forces directing 
great world movements, the adoption of new 
social machinery for social ends, the demonstra- 
tion of unsuspected powers of human Inventive- 
ness and endurance — these new conditions and 
dynamic events are an unparalleled challenge to 
the moral enterprise of society to mark out Its 
future career on revised estimates of social con- 
viction and human capacity. 

In this loosening of moorings and this expansion 
of outlook can some semblance at least of the true 
spiritual and creative purpose befitting America 
today be defined, through attention, and become 
our rallying and dynamic aim? By conscious 
efforts toward clarifying and organizing our 
thought and feelings can the high, but hazy. Ill- 
defined and ill-adjusted moral conceptions which 



Ideals of America 



admittedly feature our life, be composed into the 
symbol of a fit creative purpose for tomorrow? 
Can we pick out from our common knowledge 
and real convictions enough threads of agreement 
to weave therefrom a positive, constructive, and 
truly great program of human development, 
which can hold us together and hold us to its 
course? Can we as Americans justify our occu- 
pation of a continent by unfolding and pursuing 
a bei;^eficent, an upbuilding ideal, outbidding dis- 
ruptive motives and matching the inciting chal- 
lenge and resources of our day? 

One may scoff at or write down endeavors 
toward comprehensive appraisement and guidance 
of social life. But society will continue its age- 
long strivings toward such premeditated self- 
direction. Men have always been trying to 
straighten the path of progress and strengthen 
conviction by undertaking, periodically, in Holy 
Writ, constitutions, charters, creeds, to define as 
clearly as they could the great objects of life, so 
that such definition might serve to guide action. 
This effort may be intermittent, but It will not 
cease. Despite Its stumblings, we might almost 
call it the chief social effort of mankind, this 
strife for a better-piloted future. Without such 
determination of a long-range and paramount aim 
it is impossible to determine proper local and 
minor policies for the daily affairs of life. With 



Can America's Ideal Be Shaped? 7 

such determination the various branches of social 
endeavor tend to fall Into orderly and cumulative 
sequence. 

If the task thus crudely hinted at can be suc- 
cessfully prosecuted, If a more worthy, adequate, 
and dynamic objective for our social life, an 
objective responding to and Illumined by current 
science and faith, can by conscious effort be set 
forth and made effective, this better objective 
must arise out of those which already exist. It 
must be a development, a refinement, a higher 
Integration of the motives and alms operating 
within our present social life. Our Ideal as a 
people must blend and bring to consummate 
flower the Ideals of the constituent parts of exist- 
ing society. 

The first step In the task Is then to learn what 
are the ideals, the paramount wishes of today, 
as found In the great divisions of contemporary 
activity. Wise answers will be given In this sym- 
posium, telling forsooth not what might or should 
be, but what In actual fact are the ideals of 
life held by those engaged In the main branches 
of current action, or expressed in that action, 
what the people themselves — whose conscious- 
ness Is perhaps more richly furnished In this 
direction than we think — want life to be for 
themselves and for society, and what, in their own 



Ideals of America 



strivings and work, they are trying to make it. 
These answers, aside from their profound in- 
herent interest, will constitute the material to be 
used in the next step, the constructive effort to- 
ward the better shaping of America's true and 
fitting ideal. 



II 

Ideals in Politics 



II 

IDEALS IN POLITICS 

By Frederick D. Bramhall, Instructor in Political Science, 
University of Chicago 



M 



R. JAMES MUIRHEAD, In his Land of 
Contrasts, written In 1893, says: 

The American note includes a sense of inimitable ex- 
pansion and possibility, an almost childlike confidence in 
human ability and fearlessness of both the present and the 
future, a wider realization of human brotherhood than 
yet has existed, a greater theoretical willingness to judge 
by the individual than by the class, a breezy indifference 
to authority and a positive predilection for innovation, a 
marked alertness of mind, and a manifold variety of in- 
terest — above all, an inextinguishable hopefulness and 
courage. It is easy to lay one's finger in America on 
almost every one of the great defects of civilization — even 
those defects which are specially characteristic of the 
civilization of the Old World. The United States cannot 
claim to be exempt from manifestations of economic 
slavery, of grinding the faces of the poor, of exploitation 
of the weak, of unfair distribution of wealth, of unjust 
monopoly, of unequal laws, of industrial and commercial 
chicanery, of disgraceful ignorance, of economic fallacies, 
of public corruption, of interested legislation, of want of 
public spirit, of vulgar boasting and chauvinism, of snob- 
bery, of class prejudice, of respect of persons, and of a 
preference of the material over the spiritual. In a word, 
America has not attained, or nearly attained, perfection. 



12 Ideals of America 



But below and behind and beyond all its weakness and 
evils there is the grand fact of a noble national theory, 
founded on reason and conscience. 

And Mr. Herbert Croly, in his Promise of 
American Life, written in 1909, after quoting this 
passage, goes on to comment : 

.... The trouble is that the sins with which 
America is charged by Mr. Muirhead are flagrant viola- 
tions of our noble national theory. So far as his charges 
are true, they are a denial that the American political and 
economic organization is accomplishing the results which 

its traditional claims require If the substance of 

the foregoing indictment is really true, why, the less that 

is said about a noble national theory, the better 

His indictment is practically equivalent to the assertion 
that the American system is not, or at least is no longer, 
achieving as much as has been claimed on its behalf. A 
democratic system may permit undefiled the existence of 
many sins and abuses, but it cannot permit the exploitation 
of the ordinary man by means of unjust laws and institu- 
tions. Neither can the indictment be dismissed without 
argument A considerable portion of the Ameri- 
can people is beginning to exhibit economic and political, 
as well as personal discontent. A generation ago the im- 
plication was that, if a man remained poor and needy, his 
poverty was his own fault, because the American system 
was giving all its citizens a fair chance. Now, however, 
the discontented poor are beginning to charge their poverty 
to an unjust political and economic organization, and re- 
forming agitators do not hesitate to support them in this 
contention, 

I quote from another critic, Mr. Walter Weyl, 
in his New Democracy, published In 19 12: 



Ideals in Politics 13 



America today is in a somber, soul-questioning mood. 
We are in a period of clamor, of bewilderment, of an al- 
most tremulous unrest. We are hastily revising all our 
social conceptions. We are hastily testing all our political 
ideals. We are profoundly disenchanted with the fruits of 

a century of independence The shrill political 

cries which today fill the air are in vivid contrast with the 
stately sounding phrases of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. Men speak (with an exaggeration which is as 
symptomatic as are the evils it describes) of sensational 
inequalities of wealth, insane extravagances, strident osten- 
tations; and, in the same breath, of vast boss-ridden cities, 
with wretched slums peopled by all the world, with pau- 
perism, vice, crime, insanity, and degeneration rampant. 
We disregard, it is claimed, the lives of our workingmen. 
We muster women into dangerous factories. We enroll 
in our industrial army, by an infinitely cruel conscription, 
the anaemic children of the poor. We create hosts of 
unemployed men, whose sullen tramp ominously echoes 
through the streets of our relentless cities Revo- 
lutionary and reactionary agitators are alike disillusioned. 
They no longer place their faith upon our traditional 
democracy. 

Even the mass of men — that experimental, inventive, 
but curiously conservative group of average Americans — 
though voting instinctively, is beginning to feel that in 
essential respects the nation " conceived in liberty " has 
not borne its expected fruits. No one believes after this 
century of progress that the children of America are en- 
dowed with equal opportunities of life, health, education, 
and fructifying leisure, nor that success depends wholly on 
individual deserts. The " unalienable rights " have not 
availed against unemployment or the competition of the 
stronger. Our liberty is not yet absolute nor universally 
beneficent; our right to bear arms, our right to trial by 
jury, our rights of free speech and free assembly have been 
sensibly abridged. The slums are here; they cannot be 



14 Ideals of America 

conjured away by any spell of our old democracy 

It is in this moment of misgiving, when men are beginning 
to doubt the all-efficiency of our old-time democrac>% that 
a new democracy is born. It is a new spirit, critical, con- 
crete, insurgent. A clear-eyed discontent is abroad in 
the land. There is a low-voiced, earnest questioning. 
There is a not unreverential breaking of the tablets of 
tradition. 

I know of no better point of departure for an 
attempt to set down the contemporary political 
ideals of America than these contemporary wit- 
nesses. We have indeed lost some of the firm 
conviction of our national youth that we are the 
recipients of an ultimate political revelation. Not 
every feature of our political landscape seems 
now appareled in celestial light, nor have we so 
long trailed our clouds of glory without an in- 
creasing sense that they are being darkened with 
the soot of an industrial era. This land of ours 
trembles and waits. 

To attempt to say what the ideals of America 
are today, then, is especially presumptuous. In 
doing so, one can hardly avoid the charge of 
being more dogmatic than the facts warrant; 
there are many currents and multitudinous dis- 
sents. I shall try to describe only what seem to 
me to be the ideals of the average thoughtful, 
public-spirited American. How many such per- 
sons there are I should be quite unable to guess : 
perhaps a million, perhaps two, out of a hundred; 



Ideals in Politics i5 

and even they are by no means alike. But al- 
though this Is so, the common denominator of 
their ideals Is the common denominator of the 
Ideals of America, and whether they be regarded 
as prime movers or as resultants of forces (for 
they are both), they are equally significant as an 
Index of the movements of our great Inarticulate 
national spirit. 

This account, then, will be false In at least two 
ways. First, the run of men (and women) are 
not such creatures of reason as this description 
would make them appear; their responses are in 
general much more emotional and much less 
rational. And, second, because that Is so, the 
American people, as a whole. Is much less con- 
sciously touched with change, much more con- 
servative In the matter of political ideals, than 
this picture would make them out. That is be- 
cause (at least so I believe) contented people are, 
by and large, not thoughtful people, and, by the 
same token, thoughtful people are usually discon- 
tented people In this world of ours; and therefore 
when one Is describing the Ideals of people, 
thoughtful enough to have Ideals of their own, 
one Inevitably puts exaggerated emphasis on the 
critical rather than the complacent, on the in- 
ventor rather than the routineer, to adopt Mr. 
Walter LIppmann's terms. The great mass of 
us are routineers In politics. 



1 6 Ideals of America 

Moreover, the maintenance of the routineer 
cast of mind is served by two of the most power- 
ful engines of general Influence: the larger dally 
newspapers and the public school. The magni- 
tude of the fixed capital In a large modern news- 
paper plant and the consequent Importance of Its 
advertising and business connections make It un- 
likely that any great dally will be at all per- 
sistently a force for the reshaping of political 
Ideals. Orthodoxy on the whole Is their Inevitable 
line. 

Even more significantly Is this true of the public 
school. Faced with the unprecedented task of 
assimilating copious and heterogeneous streams 
of foreigners, the American school has devoted 
Itself to the Inculcation of traditional patriotism 
and political orthodoxy more consciously and 
effectively than any other educational system, ex- 
cept that of Germany since 1870. That this was 
a necessary and an Inestimable service Is not here 
questioned; but the fact nevertheless remains and 
must be reckoned with. In the lower grades, 
through the celebration of holidays and dally ex- 
ercises, the cult of the flag, the rather esoteric 
sentiments of My Country ^Tis of Thee, and the 
virtues of the pioneer era with Illustrations from 
the early life of George and Abe, are efficaciously 
practised; In the upper grades this Is reinforced 
by the teaching of American history, seldom later 



Ideals in Politics 17 

than the Civil War, in which the doctrines of 
1776 and 1789 (assumed to be identical) are 
usually presented as absolutes both of time and 
space. Nor is this intended as a condemnation of 
the responsible managers and teachers of our 
schools; overworked and underpaid, no other 
attitude has been possible to them. But there is 
unquestionably developing, and will now rapidly 
develop, if the account here given of contempo- 
rary ideals is true, such a sense of false dualism, 
of divorce between piety and life, as already exists 
among the more independent-minded pupils in 
most Sunday schools, unless these ideals are able 
to react soon upon the temper of the schools. 
That there are signs of such a reaction is not to 
be overlooked; but under any circumstances the 
force of the common schools will surely continue 
to be, and ought in measure to be, on the side of 
political inertia. Accordingly, such movements 
as the Short Ballot, the central control of local 
administration, and the closer union of legislative 
and executive branches have to reckon with the 
rooted orthodoxy of common school teaching as 
a very practical matter. Any departure from The 
Fathers or The Word has to meet not only the 
interested opposition of vested rights but the dis- 
interested hostility which is the result of youth- 
ful indoctrination. 

Usually the representatives of these two forces 



1 8 Ideals of America 

against change work effectively enough together, 
although, as Mr. Dooley remarked of the Su- 
preme Court justices, they often concur for totally 
different reasons. There was, however, a certain 
irony in their conflict over the proposed New 
York constitution of 19 12. The leaders of the 
convention were men who had devoted them- 
selves to the preaching of the principles of the 
Fathers and the iniquity of a departure from 
them; but as men interested in modern efficiency 
they proposed a fairly radical departure from 
them in the relations of the governor and the 
legislature in the matter of the budget. Imme- 
diately, they found themselves confronted (along 
with other opposition) with a deep-seated sus- 
picion from the generality. Those so Inclined 
may find a certain poetic justice In the fact that 
these leaders proved to be the most Ineffective 
proponents of reform that could have been dis- 
covered. They were estopped by their own 
reiterated political Ideals. 

Let us come, then, to the thoughtful minority. 
If a hundred average Americans were asked what 
was the chief of American political Ideals, ninety- 
nine would probably answer: Democracy, the Sov- 
ereignty of the People. As yet there has been no 
significant dissent from the doctrine of the Dec- 
laration that governments derive their just powers 
from the consent of the governed. So much is 



Ideals in Politics i9 

axiomatic. But if you were to ask why they were 
devoted to this ideal, the voices of response 
would grow more uncertain and various. You 
would undoubtedly catch references to a natural 
right to vote (and some of these would un- 
doubtedly be in feminine tones) ; someone would 
aver that taxation without representation was 
tyranny; and someone, in senatorial accents, would 
declare that the voice of the people is the voice 
of God. But many would at first be silent. They 
have seen the sovereign people ruling at many 
primaries and elections. They know how many 
in the long procession at any polling place have 
never in their lives weighed rationally the pros 
and cons of a single policy or the candidates for a 
single office; how many never cast a vote in their 
lives for the general good, but always for a real 
or fancied special interest of their own — how 
many. Indeed, are quite Incapable of the Idea of a 
general good; they know how pitifully many there 
are who in election after election are cajoled or 
bamboozled, played with to their own hurt by 
people who are shrewder and more unscrupulous 
than they. No, the voice of the people Is not the 
voice of God, and your average American Is not 
at all sure of a natural right to do wrong with 
other people's business. 

Slowly, however, out of the confusion might 
come some such reply as this : Democracy Is an 



20 Ideals of America 

assurance neither of wisdom nor of virtue in our 
day; but it is the best hope we have of their 
gradual but slow emergence. This is mainly for 
three reasons. First, the broader the popular 
base on which your government rests, the more 
stable it is and the more stable is progress under 
it. All will have some reason to believe that the 
will they obey is their own will, and that the com- 
mands of law are self-imposed. All feel them- 
selves more or less committed to the playing of 
the game according to the rules. Violent breaks 
with the past are less to be feared. It follows 
then that progress, though it may be slower in 
any given time than under the enlightened few, 
is likely to be more secure. Since no significant 
step can be taken until the assent of the many has 
been won, it is likely that a step once taken will 
not have to be retraced. The vanguard may have 
to pause for the stragglers to come up, but it will 
not probably be forced to give up hard-won posi- 
tions, to fall back with heavy losses upon an army 
with which it has lost touch. Second, democracy 
seems to be the only promising device for keep- 
ing government aimed straight. Since we have 
definitely given up the Platonic notion of a clas- 
sification of human beings in respect of essential 
worth, and come to the conclusion that the chance 
for a good life for everyone must weigh equally 
in the scales of state, then a wide distribution of 



Ideals in Politics 21 

power is the best safeguard against the distor- 
tion of the purpose of equal service. Let a gov- 
ernment be stupid or inept, and we may forgive; 
but if it persistently devote its powers to the serv- 
ice of some at the expense of others, that is the 
unpardonable sin. From that sin, democracy 
offers the best promise yet made of saving us. No 
critic or opponent of democracy has offered any 
practical alternative whatever. And third, de- 
mocracy is the most powerful engine of general 
education. Learning by doing, improvement by 
trial and error or success, training for responsi- 
bility by the sharing of responsibility — these are 
phases that nowadays carry pretty general con- 
viction. And if it is true that diverse as we are, 
we are nevertheless a common humanity; if, in the 
long run, it is impossible in any civilization for 
any lesser part to go permanently forward while 
the greater part remains permanently behind, then 
this enterprise of the common adventure may still 
command our vision. Democracy with all its dis- 
appointments and dangers, but at the same time 
with its recognition of human dignity and its faith 
in human improvability, is still the experiment for 
America to pursue. 

So, I think, would your thoughtful American 
regard the democratic ideal; and if his attitude 
seems to have lost some of its youthful confidence 
and finality and to have become more tentiative. 



22 Ideals of America 

more empirical, more pragmatic, then, I think, as 
has been suggested at the outset, it will be fairly 
typical of contemporary political thought. 

The second phase of present-day political 
ideals which, I believe, deserves attention has 
to do not with the method but the purpose of the 
democratic state. To a degree which still shocks 
the survivors of a generation brought up on Her- 
bert Spencer and Manchester economics we have 
accepted the social responsibility of the state. The 
reign of laissez faire seems to be over for good 
and all. No longer does the notion that the good 
of all can be arrived at by a simple addition of the 
separate self-interest of each command assent; 
nor its concomitant notion that the chief business 
of the state is to keep hands off and allow the un- 
restrained enterprise of individuals as nearly free 
rein as is compatible with elementary protection 
of life and property. There has disappeared, 
therefore, most of the interest which used to be 
exhibited in the discussion of the Sphere of the 
State. It is only in utterances quite divorced from 
action that the Jeffersonian of today insists on his 
doctrine of a minimum of government. Today 
we are inclined to avoid dogmatism on this matter, 
and to insist that the assumption or avoidance of 
a new governmental activity should be decided on 
the merits of the particular issue, without avoid- 
able reference to "principles." The cry of 



Ideals in Politics 23 

socialism, too, though not infrequently raised, has 
lost most of its terror to non-socialists. 

Does this spell an abandonment of cherished 
ideals? In an obvious way it does; but as super- 
ficial as it is obvious. So far as the American 
ideal has always been for a land where, as Lincoln 
put it, all had " equal opportunities in the race of 
life with all its desirable human aspirations," we 
are not only not abandoning it, but showing a 
desire to put forth efforts too long delayed and 
to take new risks for its truer realization. Physi- 
cally and industrially we live in a new world. 
When there were still vast unappropriated natural 
resources and the call of the West still echoed 
In every young man's ears, we were probably 
more nearly In a situation In which the facts of 
life corresponded to the laissez-faire theory than 
any other people ever has been, and when, there- 
fore, the equality of opportunity to which our 
ideal dedicated us could really be allowed in the 
main to take care of itself. The unmerited hard- 
ships which went Inevitably with a rigorous hands- 
off policy were easily Ignored In the clamor attend- 
ing great and general successes. That the devil 
took the hindmost was genially included In the 
scheme. About the time, hov/ever, that the gov- 
ernment officially announced the disappearance 
of the frontier, we began to waken to the fact 
that a whole concatenation of circumstances was 



24 Ideals of America 

closing the avenues of individual adventure. Un- 
mitigated freedom from state interference was 
beginning, to increasing millions of us, to seem to 
mean the constriction of actual self-determination 
within very narrow limits set by the growing 
power of private economic and industrial author- 
ity. The succession of the Populist movement, 
the Free Silver gospel and the Bryan Democracy, 
the Muckrakers and the Square Deal, the Insur- 
gent movement, and the Progressive party, to- 
gether with an impressive increase of the Socialist 
vote, was not " the blind fumbling of atheistic 
chance." That it was the duty of organized so- 
ciety to see to it that the equality of opportunity 
was a reality, not a theory; that we must collec- 
tively guarantee that the social environment gave 
a fair chance, at least, for a free and self-respect- 
ing life for every man, and every man's child; 
that the hindrances to the good life that a worka- 
day world presented to the ordinary well-meaning 
man beyond his power to avoid, must, in justice, 
be avoided for him by the alertness and vigor of 
the agents of the common business — these were 
the new ideas that worked themselves into the in- 
veterate laissez-fairism of our national thought. 
But a warning is necessary. It must by no 
means be thought that this trend is universal, nor 
that all thoughtful people would admit it as any- 
thing more than a temporary departure from the 



Ideals in Politics 25 

path of rectitude. It Is beyond much question 
that we Americans are still more rootedly individ- 
ualistic, that we react more instinctively to the 
appeal against government interference than any 
other people. The "state-blindness" that so im- 
pressed Mr. H. G. Wells when he wrote his re- 
markably keen impressions of us a dozen years 
ago Is still with us, whether you call it by that or 
by a sweeter name; Individualism is still the pre- 
vailing creed with us, even though it be worn with 
a difference. All that is here insisted on is the 
fact of the trend. 

Associated with this change Is another. The 
natural-rights theory Is an accompaniment of the 
negative notion of government and Is gradually 
sharing Its eclipse. Just In proportion as the im- 
pression grows that the real threats to the equality 
of opportunity come not from the state Itself, but 
from forces that we look to the state to restrain, 
our Interest In hedging the government round with 
"Thou shalt nots" Inevitably slackens. Bills of 
rights are receding from the forefront of popular 
interest partly for this reason, and partly for an- 
other: because of experience which goes to show 
that paper safeguards are In themselves fre- 
quently futile In guaranteeing the Immunity we 
have used them to sanctify. The workman who sees 
the Injunction deprive him, as he believes, of trial 
by jury, the accused man v/ho receives " the third 



26 Ideals of America 

degree/* the radical writer who finds himself 
silenced by the postmaster-general, are inclined to 
lose faith in the traditional constitutional protec- 
tions. The effective control of the forces that 
actuate, the spirit which moves, government are 
coming to be of more concern than the writing 
of negatives into instruments. Yet here again, 
we must reckon with a strong conservative ten- 
dency which clings to the old fortifications. The 
New York State Federation of Labor based its 
opposition to the draft constitution above re- 
ferred to principally on the avowed ground that 
the convention had refused to insert a new article 
in the Bill of Rights. Their logical position 
should have been: "Give us a government that 
we can control, and we don't care whether you 
put in negative commands or not." But tradi- 
tion was stronger than logic, and the fact that 
most of their members were at the same time as- 
serting that the articles already there were not 
accomplishing the results for which they had been 
put in did not seem materially to affect their in- 
terest in putting more in. Here, as before, we 
may insist only on the trend toward a more lively 
interest in having a government which will not 
want to, rather than one which is forbidden to 
violate what are regarded as rights. 

At the same time there has begun to come into 
existence an impressive amount of questioning of 



Ideals in Politics 27 

the traditional use of constitutions not only to 
bind governmental agents In the Interest of com- 
mon men, but to bind majorities In the Interest 
of established and traditional principles. It is 
only recently that it has been at all decent for 
historians to call attention to the fact that the 
Fathers of the Constitution did their work in a 
period and a mood of anti-democratic reaction; 
that, with great ability, they persuaded the giant 
of Democracy to distrust his own strength and to 
place himself under guardianship, to restrain not 
only the agents of Democracy and prevent them 
from betraying their master, the People, but to 
restrain also that very master from departing 
from the limits of a bond, which was, at least so it 
turned out, to be invoked, interpreted, and en- 
forced by the courts. A popular majority dis- 
posed to the active use of its collective authority 
would naturally begin In time to find these re- 
straints galling, the more so as by the lapse of 
time they come to appear not as self-imposed, but 
as the legacy of the dead. Now it is an unfortu- 
nate fact that even men who were Innovators 
when alive become opponents of change, deaf to 
all argument when dead. A disposition, there- 
fore, to be Impatient of the dead hand, to demand 
the more complete enfranchisement of contempo- 
rary intelligence, whether for better or worse, 
seems to be certainly a growing factor in Ameri- 



28 Ideals of America 

can political ideals. This means, primarily, a 
reexamination of the amending clauses of our 
constitutions; and secondly, a reexamination of 
the position of the courts as the trustees and 
executors of the political estate. 

These general changes in our attitude toward 
the nature and the business of the state cannot 
help bringing changes in the attitude toward the 
structure of it. If the state is to be an instrument 
of social purpose, then inevitably it will be instru- 
mentally regarded, not in the older posture of 
rapt contemplation and worship, but with a dis- 
position to analyze and criticize the machinery of 
government and its aptness to use in much the 
same way that other human contrivances are criti- 
cized: irreverently and prosaically. The golden 
age of the worship of the Constitution is past. 
It is no longer a final and completed thing, the 
letter of which is to be religiously accepted by one 
generation from its predecessor, and as religiously 
handed on in scriptural integrity to its successor. 
In things political, the American people cannot be 
charged (or credited) with a predilection for 
change; but whether we like It or not, there is 
abroad in the land a disposition to regard the in- 
herited structure of government as a set of de- 
vices, good so far as they work, and subject to 
alteration like other human creations under the 
teachings of experience. Let us hasten to add, 



Ideals in Politics 29 

for reassurance, that as yet there Is no likelihood 
that the burden of proof will be shifted from the 
proponents of change, where it may be admitted 
to belong, to the defenders of things as they are. 
All that the former seem likely In the predictable 
future to secure is the right, hitherto not In 
America generally conceded, to come into the 
court of public opinion on the merits of the case. 

There are three movements In Ideals having to 
do with the structure of government upon which 
I want to touch. They are: first, the desire for 
more direct action of the electorate; second, a de- 
cline In confidence in legislative bodies and a ques- 
tioning of the whole representative theory on 
which they rest; and third, a weakening of the 
doctrine of the separation of powers and a corre- 
sponding movement toward the simplification of 
government. 

First. This does not now take the form of a de- 
sire for the election of more officers, though inbred 
predispositions make us still likely to resist a re- 
duction of them. It takes rather the form of a 
demand for the direct Interposition of the voters, 
acting by ballot, to supplant. Instruct, or correct 
their elected representatives — the direct primary, 
the Initiative, the referendum, the recall. Of 
course, all this Is steadfastly resisted; but It must 
be confessed that perfectly sound appeals to Mill 
and to the reconcilement of popular suffrage with 



30 Ideals of America 

government by the best, through the beneficent 
operation of the representative principle, have, to 
many who have watched unrepresentative govern- 
ment at work in the United States, an unfortu- 
nately hollow ring. The more thoughtful of the 
advocates of these innovations declare that their 
purpose is not to destroy the representative prin- 
ciple, but to restore it to its once fair estate as an 
agency of the democratic purpose; and to quiet 
the alarm of their opponents, they point to the 
underestimated force of popular inertia, to the 
pretty steadily conservative bent of the American 
electorate, and the rare occurrence and compara- 
tively low pitch of those "waves of popular pas- 
sion'' which the Fathers feared. These demands 
are however important rather as symptoms than 
as substantial transformations of our political 
forms. It is apparent that their basis is in part 
the same as that of the next movement. 

Second. The dissatisfaction with legislatures 
is notorious. We are usually told that the reason 
for it is that we do not elect good enough men; 
but what truth there is in this easy statement is 
truism. The fact that this feeling applies not to 
the two houses of Congress only, but to state 
legislatures (and both houses of them), and to 
city councils as well, and not for one year, but 
for a generation, leads the thoughtful to a search 
for more fundamental explanations. Once pop- 



Ideals in Politics 3i 

ular legislatures were the visible embodiment of 
the democratic ideal; now there is almost none 
so poor to do them reverence. That practically 
all advanced countries deplore a similar decline in 
legislatures has not yet struck the American con- 
sciousness; if it had, we might find a doleful con- 
solation in it. In truth, the reasons are probably 
spread large on the surface of national life. The 
legislature a hundred years ago was the one meet- 
ing of minds touched with a public consciousness; 
public opinion was practically within Its four 
walls. Now, with the spread of general educa- 
tion, the coming of rapid transportation and com- 
munication, the telegraph, the cheap newspaper, 
and the great news services, that is no longer so. 
The dignity and prestige of the legislative func- 
tion, and Its attractiveness to ambitious men, have 
suffered a relative depression. But there has also 
been an absolute depression, due partly to the 
reaction of these things just mentioned, but 
largely, I venture to say, to the coming in of the 
era of capitalist enterprise and the opportunities 
both for offense and defense which the traditional 
legislative structure and the circumstances of pop- 
ular election offered. 

Whether these explanations be accepted or not, 
the situation is here. When a man so far re- 
moved from destructive radicalism as Mr. Root 
is reputed to be, declared in 19 12 that the govern- 



32 Ideals of America 

ment of New York had been for a generation about 
as representative as that of Venezuela, such dis- 
sent as there was must have been expressed in 
the newspapers of Venezuela. What the con- 
temporary ideals for reconstruction are, however, 
is by no means so clear. We may notice one new 
current, the volume of which Is likely to grow, 
viz. : that away from an exclusively geographical 
basis of representation. An increasing number of 
reflective people is asking why it should be that 
the one criterion for the formation of a consti- 
tuency should be a greater or less propinquity of 
the dwelling houses of its members. Is the fact 
that people live somewhere near one another (or, 
in cities, that they sleep, rather, in the same 
quarter of town) the only or even the most sig- 
nificant fact on which to base community of repre- 
sentation? What of community of thought and 
purpose? Of interest? Of calling? Can we 
hope on a purely geographic basis ever to get a 
legislature which is a true picture of the public 
mind? In the past, these questions have been 
raised chiefly by the rather academic advocates of 
"proportional representation;" but recently there 
have been added to these, from the industrial side, 
the advocates of group representation, of guild- 
socialism, of economic federalism. It is too early 
yet to say whether these ideas will grow powerful 
enough in this country to modify our legislative, if 



Ideals in Politics 33 

not indeed our whole state structure. Give a 
continuance of present dissatisfaction, and we may 
guess that they will. 

Third. Dogmas have had a tenacious grip on 
the American political mind. Of this there is no 
more striking illustration than the persistence of 
the theory of the separation of powers. Origi- 
nating in a faulty description of the English con- 
stitution by a Frenchman, it suited the current 
run of political thought in the authors of the con- 
stitution. The separation of government into 
three distinct bodies, the placing of each in a dis- 
tinct orbit, the establishment of checks and bal- 
ances, the nice adjustment of centripetal and 
centrifugal forces, so that once started the stately 
processions of political bodies might go unalter- 
ably on under the compulsion of forces not unlike 
that which doth preserve the stars from wrong — 
all this was, as Professor Wilson of Princeton 
said, some years ago, a typically eighteenth cen- 
tury, mechanical, Newtonian theory. But we 
have passed over into the age of Darwin, of 
organic evolution, and biological science; and at 
the same time, as already has been observed, into 
the positive and active, rather than the negative 
and passive state. The doctrine of separation of 
powers was never a working doctrine and it has 
never worked; and although it is still frequently 
invoked, it is undoubtedly losing power. The 



34 Ideals of America 

agitation for a budget system, the commission 
system for cities, are both indications of its 
weakening hold. 

Especially is the decay of the separation of 
powers theory opening the way for a frank recog- 
nition of the changed position of the executive. 
We are beginning to cease apologizing for the 
exercise of executive leadership, and to accept that 
leadership as a part of our working ideals. It is 
fairly safe to predict that, with some safeguards 
against the use of illegitimate weapons, the execu- 
tive will be definitely accepted as a voice of the 
public purpose and a formulator of public policies. 
The shape this is likely to take — whether it will 
approximate to the forms in which executive 
leadership already is recognized in practically 
every other significant government than our own, 
or find new forms more indigenous — need not 
detain us here. 

Finally, let us return to the characterization 
of our contemporary political ideals with which 
this paper began. The impression which I have 
intended to keep in mind throughout has been that 
of tentativeness and plasticity. We have the 
sense of having left an era behind, and of facing 
an era whose main forces we cannot at all 
measure. The one thing, I think, that we are sure 
of Is that there is no sureness in anything political 
except the fundamental purpose to realize a truer 



Ideals in Politics 35 

justice, a fairer equality of opportunity for every 
child born into the country; and a faith in the 
realization of that purpose through the active co- 
operation of all. In that deepest sense of democ- 
racy, the indefinite improvability of all manner of 
men, we have so far kept the faith. If there is a 
disposition to discard old ideals, then, it is the 
minor ones that we abandon, and only for the 
purpose of pushing on more resolutely toward the 
greater ideal we have always professed. 

That there are dangers ahead, no lover of his 
country, no one who " finds in her a bulwark for 
the cause of men," can or would deny. And the 
greatest of these dangers is that we may, through 
lethargy or selfish blindness allow that fatal 
cleavage to develop between the noble profession 
of the great ideal which has always been 
America's pride, and the concrete realization of 
it. If we blindly allow a political system theo- 
retically democratic to be thwarted by the pres- 
sure of an economic system not democratic; if we 
permit inherited forms to be not channels for 
political progress but obstacles to it, then we shall 
really have jeopardized American political ideals. 
The only rock on which we are in great danger 
of splitting is a growing sense of the futility of 
the democratic method, in its visible forms, for 
reaching the democratic goal; that distrust of 
political action and disposition toward substitut- 



36 Ideals of America 

ing "direct action" for It which too complacent 
a clinging to old ideals of form and function alone 
is capable of producing in any considerable part 
of the American people. If we have courage to 
trust the democratic method of growth and change 
toward democratic Ideals, the patriot and the 
humanitarian may still be optimists. 



m 

Ideals in Law 



Ill 

IDEALS IN LAW 

By John Bradley Winslow, Chief Justice 
Supreme Court of Wisconsin 

IT HAS been said that "ideals are like stars; 
you will not succeed in touching them with 
your hands, but, like the seafaring man on the 
waste of waters, you choose them as your guides, 
and following them you reach your destiny." A 
civilization destitute of high ideals is at best only 
a gilded barbarism; a people which sets up for 
worship the trinity of wealth, luxury, and frivo- 
lous amusement has its doom already pronounced. 
Industry, commerce, science, art, education, 
social intercourse, in fact all the organized human 
activities which make up what we call civilization 
depend for their existence upon social order, and 
social order in turn is dependent upon the effective 
protection of life, liberty, and property by law. 
Hence it is hardly too much to say that civiliza- 
tion is really law, or at least that it cannot exist 
in the absence of law; and if this be true then it 
must also be true that the civilization of any 

39 



40 Ideals of America 

people or any age must find accurate expression 
in the laws of that people or age. 

A fundamental ideal which is not ultimately 
reflected with greater or less fidelity in the law 
can hardly be called an ideal of the age but rather 
the ideal of a few individuals or of a class. Yet 
the ideal must, of course, precede the law and fre- 
quently exists for a long time before it crystallizes 
into law. The reasons are obvious. Ethical and 
moral standards change from century to century 
but the change is only gradual. The law repre- 
sents the prevailing thought at the time of its 
adoption. Manifestly there will be no change in 
the law until the new thought has become domi- 
nant and very markedly dominant. It must have 
passed the stage of mere agitation, however 
vigorous the agitation may be, and reached the 
point where it is accepted by the majority of the 
electorate before it can hope to find expression 
in law. 

Especially is this true under a government 
which, like our own, is based upon an unyielding 
written constitution. Here the ideas and ideals 
dominant at the time of the adoption of the Con- 
stitution have been enacted into fundamental law 
which can be changed only after a long and 
laborious process, generally including the ap- 
proval of two legislatures and a referendum vote 
by the people. It Is very manifest that substan- 



Ideals in Law 41 

tial changes cannot be expected in constitutional 
provisions until the new idea has been long de- 
bated and has become overwhelmingly strong. 

This is not to say that written constitutions are 
undesirable, nor even that the amendment of such 
constitutions should be made easier of accomplish- 
ment. I believe in the written constitution and 
also believe that it should not be subject to quick 
and easy change to suit the popular whim of the 
moment, but I have no brief on those propositions 
to present. After all is said that may be said, the 
fact remains that the existence of such a constitu- 
tion unquestionably postpones and makes more 
difficult the incorporation of new and fundamental 
Ideas into the law and this is the point which I 
wished to emphasize. 

No more striking example can be found of the 
crystallization of governmental and political 
ideals Into fundamental law than that furnished 
by the constitutions of the American states. What 
may be called the constitution-making period of 
our history (comprising the latter part of the 
eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth 
centuries) was a period when new Ideas and Ideals 
of the most advanced character dominated Ameri- 
can thought. Never was there a more favorable 
opportunity for the incorporation of ideals into 
basic law than the opportunity then presented. 

Here were empires In the making; here was 



42 Ideals of America 

being done what never before had been done, at 
least on any such magnificent scale, namely, the 
creation out of hand of sovereign states composed 
of highly civilized, intelligent people conscious of 
their power and confident of their ability. No 
time-hardened precedents barred the way; no 
hereditary privileges, secular or ecclesiastical, had 
to be dislodged; no hoary abuses buttressed be- 
hind the walls of centuries frowned defiance on 
the champions of the new order of things. 

We know very well that the governmental ideal 
which was then dominant was the great ideal of 
untrammeled, individual liberty and we also know 
very well why this was so. Centuries of arbitrary 
and irresponsible government had produced its 
natural result — a result proclaimed as well by 
the Parisian mob which stormed the Bastille as 
by the embattled farmers of Lexington and Con- 
cord whose shots rang around the world — and 
that result was a conviction that the individual 
citizen, whatever his station, was entitled to the 
greatest liberty of action consistent with the exist- 
ence of a stable government. 

Here was unquestionably the dominant govern- 
mental ideal of our fathers and it needs only the 
most superficial examination of our constitutions, 
state and federal, to see that they crystallized that 
ideal in sweeping and unmistakable language in 
the fundamental law of every American state. 



Ideals in Law 43 

Every demand and every guaranty in the bill of 
rights (which is preserved at length in nearly or 
quite all of the American constitutions) breathes 
forth this idea in one form or another. Examine 
these guarantees and see if this is not so. First 
comes the statement of the inherent or Inalienable 
rights of man, the rights to life, liberty, and prop- 
erty, or, as it Is sometimes put, the pursuit of 
happiness. Then come the more concrete rights: 
the right of free speech, of jury trial, of a uniform 
rule of taxation, of petition, of freedom of wor- 
ship, of a certain remedy In the law for all wrongs, 
of an Impartial jury and a speedy trial in all 
criminal prosecutions, as well as the right to con- 
front the Vv^itnesses and be Informed of the charge 
and be heard by himself and by counsel. Then 
come what may be called the negative rights such 
as the provisions prohibiting two prosecutions for 
the same offense, self Incrimination, unreasonable 
searches and seizures, cruel and unusual punish- 
ments, the impairment of the obligations of con- 
tracts. Imprisonment for debt, ex post facto legis- 
lation, the taking of private property without com- 
pensation, the suspension of the writ of habeas 
corpus In time of peace, the establishment of re- 
ligious tests, and the elevation of the military 
above the civil power. 

In one way or another they are all Intended to 
put into effect the fundamental idea that the citi- 



44 Ideals of America 

zen of a democracy is entitled to the widest liberty 
of Individual action consistent with the existence 
of good government. 

This is doubtless the basic principle upon which 
a democracy rests, In fact It seems that there can 
be no real democracy unless this principle be para- 
mount and supreme. But It Is, of course, an 
abstract Idea; It does not carry with It any test by 
which It may be Infallibly Interpreted In any given 
case; It may mean one thing to one mind and an- 
other thing to another; Indeed it may mean dif- 
ferent things to the same mind under different 
conditions. 

The original constitution makers lived and 
wrote at a time when life was simple, wants few, 
and the population scattered; a time when there 
were no great cities, no congested areas of popu- 
lation and everyone had or might have elbow- 
room and to spare. They knew that arbitrary 
power In the past had confiscated property under 
the guise of taxation, set at naught contracts and 
contract rights, denied religious freedom, bullied 
the courts, made the administration of justice a 
mockery, suppressed free speech, imprisoned the 
citizen without trial, hurried innocent men to the 
dungeon and the headsman's block and Interfered 
with the exercise of the most fundamental human 
rights, and these were the things which they had 
In mind when they framed the bill of rights. 



Ideals in Law 45 



Moreover the wondrous Idea that all men were 
equal filled the air, not merely equal before the 
law but substantially equal in opportunity and 
ability to defend their right. Any boy might as- 
pire to the presidency. All that any citizen needed 
or deserved was a fair field. Never was there a 
time, probably, when this theory came so near 
being true as in America a century ago ; neverthe- 
less we know It was not really true then and is 
much further from the truth now. But it was 
unquestionably the prevalent and preponderating 
Idea at the time the early constitutions were 
written, and under Its Influence the sweeping com- 
mands and prohibitions of the constitutions were 
made. The Idea was, let every citizen have pre- 
cisely the same abstract rights and let him defend 
them as best he may; this makes a democracy; this 
carries out the glorious Idea that every citizen Is 
the master of his own destiny and carves out his 
career with his own unaided arm. 

The constitution makers were great men; we 
shall always rightly reverence them ; yet they were 
not omniscient. They could not look into the dis- 
tant future and see how rapidly the beautiful 
theory of equal opportunity was to fade. Nor 
could they suppose that conditions might so change 
that some of the very provisions which to them 
seemed necessary to protect the Individual from 
executive tyranny would be Invoked to justify a 



46 Ideals of America 

tyranny quite different in its nature but quite as 
disastrous in its effects upon the citizen and upon 
the state. 

They could hardly imagine that the time would 
ever come when it would be thought by anybody 
that public welfare would demand that a man be 
protected from his own acts, or in other words 
that his right to contract with regard to his own 
labor should be limited; they could not suppose 
that it could ever be seriously claimed that In- 
equality In taxation might constitute the truest 
equality, that private property or property rights 
ought sometimes to be sacrificed for the benefit 
of the public, that any business naturally lawful 
ought to be controlled by the state, or that the 
remedies afforded by the courts had become In- 
adequate. And yet the time has come when these 
things, and many more of like nature, are said, 
not because there was any serious need that they 
should be said at the time the first constitutions 
were written, but because of the enormous change 
in the conditions of life, both material and intel- 
lectual, which a century has produced. 

Great as this change was. Its significance was 
long unappreciated, nor was this strange; the 
wonders of the industrial revolution wrought by 
nineteenth century Inventions came so rapidly that 
there was little opportunity for any thought save 
thoughts of amazement and exultation. Had this 



Ideals in Law 47 

been otherwise, however, the great national prob- 
lems involved in the Civil War — the abolition 
of slavery and the reconstruction of civil govern- 
ment in the South — so fully occupied the public 
mind for more than a quarter of a century that 
there was room for little else. In the presence of 
problems like these, mere sociological and eco- 
nomic questions were dwarfed into insignificance. 

The great and significant legal ideal of that 
period w^as the ideal of equal rights to a greatly 
wronged race and this ideal was wrought into the 
national Constitution by the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment which forbade any state to abridge the 
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United 
States, to deprive any person of life, liberty, or 
property without due process of law, or to deny to 
any person the equal protection of the laws. 

This amendment embodied in the fullest degree 
the idea of the inviolability of property and prop- 
erty rights; its purpose was to place the Negro 
on the same plane in these respects as the white 
man; the thought that individual freedom could 
ever be too carefully protected had not yet ap- 
peared; the amendment marked the high tide of 
individualism; it was not long before the sub- 
sidence of the tide began. Not that the abstract 
ideal of the greatest individual liberty consistent 
with good government was to be rejected, but 
that it began to be realized that it was entirely 



4^ Ideals of America 

possible that too much thought had been bestowed 
upon the individual, and too little thought upon 
the mass. 

I would not be understood as indicating that 
there had been no legislation aiming to ameliorate 
the condition of the poor and the unfortunate 
prior to the Civil War. The quarter century 
following the panic of 1837 was marked by much 
legislation, both constitutional and statutory, 
along this line. During this period imprisonment 
for debt was almost universally abolished; ex- 
emption of homesteads, household goods, and 
wages from seizure for debt became general; me- 
chanic's lien laws were perfected; free school 
systems were established, and the protective tariff 
system, for the avowed purpose of protecting the 
home laborer against foreign, low-wage competi- 
tion, became a national policy. Generally speak- 
ing, however, these measures were supported by 
humanitarian and philanthropic arguments and 
not by the thought that the theory of individ- 
ualism could be carried too far. The change of 
thought on this subject did not become significant 
until after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment. 

It is scarcely necessary to enlarge upon the 
change of conditions which was largely re- 
sponsible for this change of thought. The de- 
sirable public lands had been taken up, and thus 



Ideals in Law 49 

one safety valve for a constantly crowding popu- 
lation had disappeared; a nation principally rural 
in its population had become more and more 
largely urban; vast industries with armies of 
workmen had succeeded to the village shop; the 
laborer dealt not with an Individual employer at 
arm's length but with mighty corporations whose 
officers knew him only by number; an enormous 
commerce, domestic and foreign, had brought 
wealth and luxury undreamed of a century ago; 
imperial cities with their magnificence and their 
squalor, their wealth and their poverty, their 
palaces and their slums, had come and come to 
stay; In a word the elbowroom was gone, and men 
jostled their neighbors at every turn; untram- 
meled individual freedom of action became im- 
possible If men were to live together In peace and 
harmony. 

The changes which have taken place since the 
adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment In social, 
economic, and governmental Ideals, and the extent 
to which those changes have been reflected as well 
in statute law as In the decisions of the courts 
are the subjects to which I wish briefly to direct 
your thought. It would not be correct to say that 
formerly the tendency of thought was to exalt In- 
dividual freedom without regard to the welfare of 
the general public, and that now the tendency is 
exactly to the contrary, yet unquestionably this 



50 Ideals of America 

correctly states the points of greatest emphasis 
in past and present thought. 

The most superficial observer can hardly fail 
to notice that, during the last three or four dec- 
ades, a number of more or less definite and 
radical general ideas have taken strong hold 
of the public mind. Some of them are very 
markedly humanitarian in their nature, some of 
them have to do with a more equitable distribu- 
tion of the rewards of toil and burdens of taxa- 
tion, some with a better control of the great public 
utilities, some with city building and sanitation 
and public health and safety, some with conserva- 
tion of our national resources, both material and 
human, some with a more direct control by the 
people over governmental processes, but all of 
them in greater or less degree Involve for their 
realization Increased governmental activity and 
Increased regard for the general welfare of the 
mass as distinguished from the abstract right of 
the individual. 

Among these Ideas may be specially mentioned 
the Idea that under modern industrial conditions 
employer and employee do not meet on an equal 
footing when they are contracting or when their 
Interests clash and that the law ought In some way 
or ways to remove or minimize the inequality; the 
Idea that housing and living conditions In cities, 
sanitation, playgrounds, and the building of cities 



Ideals in Law 5i 

cannot be left to the mercies of private selfishness 
but must be controlled by the state; the idea that 
the state should place higher education within 
the reach of all citizens; the idea that we have 
allowed large portions of our great national re- 
sources to go permanently into private ownership 
and become the foundations of private fortunes in- 
stead of retaining the fee title in the state and 
allowing use and exploitation only under such con- 
ditions as would conserve them for the ultimate 
benefit of the whole people; the Idea that both 
state and national governments should undertake 
reforestation and afforestation to replace the 
forests which have been destroyed and prevent 
the serious effects upon climate, rainfall, flow of 
rivers, and erosion of soil which ever have fol- 
lowed the wholesale destruction of forests in other 
lands; the idea that combinations of capital and 
business tending to stifle competition are hostile 
to the best Interests of the people; the Idea that 
public utilities must be regulated by law both as 
to their rates and as to the quality of their service 
if the public is to be properly served; the idea that 
the public should be protected from the man who 
sells adulterated food and the quack who fattens 
on the credulity of the sick; the Idea that prop- 
erty taxation does not result in a just distribution 
of public burdens but that the public expenses 
should be defrayed far more largely by graded 



52 Ideals of America 

taxes upon privileges, occupations, incomes, and 
inheritances; the idea that our methods of en- 
forcement of the criminal law have not been 
scientific or successful; the idea that the adminis- 
tration of justice by the courts has not been 
efficient; and lastly the idea that we need more 
complete democracies and that to that end the 
people should have the right to nominate candi- 
dates for all offices at primary elections, to recall 
at will officials who are not giving satisfaction, 
and to legislate by direct vote without the inter- 
vention of legislative bodies. 

The order In which these ideas are here sug- 
gested Is not to be taken to Indicate In any way 
my idea of their relative Importance. I have 
simply listed them as they have occurred to my 
mind. Nor do I undertake any argument in sup- 
port of them at this time; It is enough for my 
present purpose to note their widespread existence 
and to give some Idea of the extent to which the 
law has responded to some of them. 

Labor legislation of various kinds may well be 
first considered not only on account of Its volume 
but also on account of its intrinsic Importance. 
Few realize the extent of the legislation, state and 
national, In this general field during recent years. 

Early In 19 14 the federal department of labor 
published the labor laws of the states In two 
volumes containing more than 2,400 pages. No 



Ideals in Law 53 

complete compilation has been made since that 
time, but the legislatures of the various states 
have added many hundreds of new laws to the 
list. Certainly the legislative response to the 
popular thought has been ample in quantity, If 
not in quality. In general these laws may be said 
to be based upon one or both of two general ideas ; 
jirst, that employer and employee do not stand on 
an equal footing, and second, that It Is to the in- 
terest not merely of the employee but of the state 
that the inequality be corrected as far as possible, 
because the state is vitally concerned in the physi- 
cal and mental welfare of Its citizens. 

To list these laws would be tiresome; a state- 
ment of the principal objects sought to be accom- 
plished by them must serve the present purpose. 
Among these objects are, the abolition of the com- 
pany stores and the payment of wages in cash, 
the regulation of hours of labor especially of 
female labor, the prohibition or great restriction 
of child labor, the establishment of the minimum 
wage, the compulsory adoption of safety devices, 
the guarding or fencing of dangerous machinery, 
the safeguarding of factories from danger by fire, 
from Infectious diseases, from defective ventila^ 
tion and the like, the prevention of discrimination 
against union labor, the establishment of indus^ 
trial accident Insurance or workmen's compensa- 
tion systems by which compensation for industrial 



54 Ideals of America 

accidents not self-inflicted Is at once made and 
ultimately borne by the public, the establishment 
of public employment agencies and mother's pen- 
sions. 

This list does not by any means Include all of 
the governmental activities In the field of labor 
which have become well established In some 
European states such as Insurance against old age, 
unemployment. Illness, chronic Invalidism, and 
death, as well as widows' and orphans' Insurance; 
nor does It Include laws providing Industrial courts 
or tribunals for the settlement of disputes between 
employer and employee, which successfully oper- 
ate In Europe. 

As Illustrative of the general character of labor 
legislation and Its treatment by the courts, it will 
be helpful to consider briefly the legislation re- 
quiring wages to be paid In cash and the kindred 
legislation which aims to abolish or remedy the 
evils of the company store, sometimes called the 
*' truck" store. This subject Is treated some- 
what fully In the following paragraphs because 
It was practically the first of the police measures 
affecting the relations between business and labor 
to come before the courts and because in the con- 
test over its constitutionality the principles which 
were destined to prevail were flrst distinctly laid 
down. 

Most of the states have laws of one kind or 



Ideals in Law 55 



the other and some have both. The company 
store is, of course, a store which the employer 
owns and compels his employees to patronize, 
paying them in orders for goods at the store and 
thus selling his merchandise at a profit and with- 
out competition. The abuse is an ancient one and 
came to us from England. The statutes Intended 
to correct the evils of the company store system 
either forbid the employer from being interested 
in such a store or in the furnishing of supplies to 
his employees, or else they prohibit the issuance 
of any check or order, in payment of wages, which 
Is not redeemable in lawful money. Such laws 
are necessarily based on the idea of inequality in 
the position of employer and employee when they 
meet to make their contract, an inequality which 
the state ought to correct as far as possible. 

They were at once attacked In the courts and 
with considerable success. The Supreme Court 
of Pennsylvania In 1886 said of the provisions 
of an act requiring all workmen In manufacturing 
establishments to be paid In cash at the end of 
each month, they are 

Unconstitutional and void inasmuch as by them an 
attempt has been made by the legislature to do what In 
this country cannot be done; that is, prevent persons who 
are sui juris from making their own contracts. The act 
is an infringement alike of the right of the employer and 
the employee; more than this, It is an insulting attempt 
to put the laborer under a legislative tutelage which Is 



56 Ideals of America 



not only degrading to his manhood but subversive of his 
rights as a citizen of the United States. He may sell his 
labor for what he thinks best whether money or goods, just 
as his employer may sell his iron or coal, and any and 
every law that proposes to prevent him from so doing is 
an infringement of his constitutional privileges and con- 
sequently vicious and void.^ 

In 1899 the Supreme Court of Kansas dealt 
with a similar statute and, if possible, with 
greater vigor. That court said: 

Freedom of action, liberty, is the cornerstone of our 
governmental fabric. Laws which infringe upon the free 
exercise of the right of a workingman to trade his labor 
for any commodity or species of property which he may 
consider to be the most advantageous is an encroachment 
upon his constitutional rights and an obstruction to his 
pursuit of happiness. Such laws as the one under con- 
sideration classify him among the incompetents and de- 
grade his calling . . . . it is in violation of the Four- 
teenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United 
States in that it denies to persons within this state the 
equal protection of the laws.^ 

Nor was the Supreme Court of IHinoIs far be- 
hind In this Herculean effort to save the working- 
man from degradation. That court said as early 
as 1893, 

The right to contract necessarily includes the right to 
fix the price at which labor will be performed and the 
mode and time of payment. Each is an essential element 
of the right to contract and whosoever is restricted in 

^ Godcharles v. Wigeman, 113 Pa. St. 431. 
2 State V. Haun, 61 Kan. 146. 



Ideals in Law 57 

either, as the same is enjoyed by the community at large, 
is deprived of liberty and property. ^ 

It is quite probable that few worklngmen ap- 
preciated the anxiety shown by the courts in these 
decisions to prevent the restriction of their liberty 
to make contracts. Indeed, it would be a remark- 
able man who could appreciate it. They had 
asked for no such relief, in fact they had been 
absolutely content to remain in their state of tu- 
telage, but they had been rescued from it at the 
earnest request of their employers. It was all 
very confusing. An academic victory like this, 
achieved against his wish under the generalship 
of his employer and wrought out in the rarefied 
atmosphere of abstract reasoning, must have been 
about as satisfactory to the workingman as a 
*' Barmecide feast " to the hungry. 

In these opinions the dominance of the classic 
ideal of individual liberty is very apparent. The 
honesty of the judges who wrote them and the 
courts which promulgated them is entirely beyond 
question. They expressed ideas which for dec- 
ades had been regarded as unassailable; especially 
the idea that the American worker stood on an 
even plane with his employer, that he was just as 
free in his choice of an employer as his employer 
in the choice of an employee, that he was a true 

1 Braceville Coal Co. v. People, 147 Ills. 66. 



58 Ideals of America 

sovereign who needed no favors but only a fair 
field. It had not yet been perceived that there 
was a huge fallacy in this reasoning; that the em- 
ployee was not always, nor often, actually free in 
his choice of an employer; that grim necessity, in 
the shape of a family to be supported or some 
other circumstance making change of location or 
employer practically impossible, deprived the em- 
ployee of any real choice. 

The end of these decisions was not yet, how- 
ever. A similar act requiring all employers to 
redeem in cash all store orders or evidences of 
debt given to their employees was held constitu- 
tional by the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 
1899. In the opinion in this case the principle 
of the right of the state to correct inequalities 
of position is fully recognized. The Fourteenth 
Amendment was duly invoked, but the court said, 
among other things : 

The legislature evidently deemed the laborer at some 
disadvantage under existing laws and customs, and by this 
act undertook to ameliorate his condition in some measure 
by enabling him .... to demand and receive his un- 
paid wages in money rather than in something less valu- 
able. Its tendency, though slight it may be, is to place 
the employer and emplo5^ee upon equal ground in the 
matter of wages, and, so far as calculated to accomplish 

the end, deserves commendation The first right 

of a state, as of a man, is self-protection, and with the 
state that right involves the universally acknowledged 
power and duty to enact and enforce all such laws not In 



Ideals in Law 59 

plain conflict with some provision of the Federal Consti- 
tution as may rightly be deemed necessary or expedient 
for the safety, health, morals, comfort, and welfare of its 
people. The act .... is neither prohibitory nor 
penal; not special but general; tending towards equality 
between employer and employee in the matter of wages; 
intended and well calculated to promote peace and good 
order, and to prevent strife, violence, and bloodshed. 
Such being the character, purpose, and tendency of the act 
we have noi hesitation in holding that it is valid both as 
general legislation without reference to the state's reserved 
police power, and also as a w^holesome regulation adopted 
in the proper exercise of that power.^ 

This case was carried to the Supreme Court of 
the United States and that court in October, 1901, 
affirmed the decision, quoting with approval a 
considerable part of the opinion of the lower 
court, including the extracts just quoted.^ The 
Federal Supreme Court had, however, met and 
determined a cognate question a little earlier as 
we shall see. 

To sum up on this subject, and without going 
into tiresome details, there seems to be direct 
conflict in the decisions of the state courts on the 
subject as to whether legislation of this character 
is constitutional but the Supreme Court of the 
United States has settled the question that such 
legislation is not forbidden by the Fourteenth 
Amendment and this must go a long way toward 

1 Harbison v. Knoxville Iron Co., 103 Tenn. 421. 

2 Knoxville I. Co. v. Harbison, 183 U. S. 13. 



6o Ideals of America 

removing the doubt thrown upon the question by 
the contrariety of opinion in the state courts. The 
strong presumption must be that future decisions 
in the state courts will follow the federal lead. 

Another and more far-reaching class of labor 
laws are the laws limiting hours of labor and the 
conditions under which children may labor. So 
far as minors are concerned such laws have been 
generally conceded to be constitutional, but so far 
as adults are concerned the attacks upon them on 
the ground of interference with the free right of 
contract have been very numerous and the results 
have been successful in some jurisdictions, but un- 
successful in others. The story is a very long one 
and only brief consideration can be given to it 
here, interesting as it certainly is. 

One thing perhaps may be safely affirmed: 
Wherever It can reasonably be said that restric- 
tion of the hours of labor as to either women or 
men Is necessary for or conducive to the preserva- 
tion of the health of the employees the courts will 
sustain the statute as a valid exercise of the po- 
lice power. This result has not been reached, 
however, without serious opposition on the part 
of some of the courts. 

The case in this field which must ever be con- 
sidered as a landmark, or perhaps rather as mark- 
ing a turning point In judicial thought, is the case 
of Holden v. Hardy decided by the Supreme 



Ideals in Law 6i 

Court of the United States In February, 1898.^ 
The legislature of the state of Utah had passed 
an act limiting the hours of labor In mines and 
smelters to eight hours a day and this act had 
been sustained by the Supreme Court of that 
state as a proper exercise of the police power on 
the ground that the occupations named were dan- 
gerous and unhealthy and hence that the state 
could rightly step In and limit the hours of dally 
labor In the Interest of the health of Its citizens. 
The case went to the Federal Supreme Court and 
the Fourteenth Amendment was strongly relied 
on. The decision of the lower court was affirmed. 
Mr. Justice Brown wrote the opinion and his 
name would be entitled to be held In grateful re- 
membrance to the latest generations had he writ- 
ten no other. The following excerpts contain the 
meat of It: 

The legislature has also recognized the fact which the 
experience of legislators In many states has corroborated, 
that the proprietors of these establishments and their 
operatives do not stand upon an equality, and that their 
interests are, to a certain extent, conflicting. The former 
naturally desire to obtain as much labor as possible from 
their employees, while the latter are often induced by the 
fear of discharge to conform to regulations which their 
judgment fairly exercised would pronounce to be detri- 
mental to their health or strength. In other words, the 
proprietors lay down the rules and the laborers are prac- 
tically constrained to obey them. In such cases .sslf- 

1 169 U. S. %U. 



62 Ideals of America 

interest is often an unsafe guide and the legislature may 
properly interpose its authority. It may not be improper 
to suggest in this connection that although the prosecution 
in this case was against the employer of labor, who ap- 
parently, under the statute, is the only one liable, his 
defense is not so much that his right to contract has been 
infringed on but that the act works a peculiar hardship 
to his employees, whose right to labor as long as they 
please is alleged to be thereby violated. The argument 
would certainly come w^ith better grace and greater co- 
gency from the latter class. But the fact that both 
parties are of full age and competent to contract does not 
necessarily deprive the state of the power to interfere where 
the parties do not stand upon an equality, or where the 
public health demands that one party to the contract 
shall be protected against himself. The state still retains 
an interest in his welfare however reckless he may be. 
The whole is no greater than the sum of all the parts and 
when the individual health, safety, and welfare are sac- 
rificed or neglected, the state must suffer. 

Here Is succinctly and forcibly stated the new 
principle that the state Is entitled to protect Itself 
by protecting a class of Its citizens against their 
own acts. 

Notwithstanding adverse decisions In some 
states the view taken by the Federal Supreme 
Court has already prevailed In the greater num- 
ber of states where the question has been brought 
before the courts, and there can be little doubt 
that It will become more and more dominant as 
time goes on. 

What seems on Its face to be a step backward 
was taken by the Federal Supreme Court In 1904 



Ideals in Law 63 

in the Lochner case ^ where a law of New York 
limiting the hours of labor in bakeries, which had 
been held constitutional by the Supreme Court of 
that state, was held not a legitimate exercise of 
the police power and an unreasonable and arbi- 
trary interference with the right of individuals to 
contract, hence void under the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment. The decision was by a bare majority of 
the court and there was a very vigorous dissent. 
Justice Peckham, who wrote the opinion of the 
court, based the decision on the ground that the 
law was not really a health measure because it 
was common knowledge that working in a bakery 
was not a specially unhealthy employment hence 
there was no legal foundation for making a dis- 
crimination between bakers and other trades or 
occupations. I doubt if such a decision would be 
made by that great court now; however, the opin- 
ion does not overrule In any way the foundation 
principles of the Holden case but simply decides 
that it appeared as matter of law that baking 
was not an unhealthful employment and conse- 
quently there was no ground for discrimination 
between it and other employments. 

Legislation limiting the hours of labor of 
women has been quite generally upheld on the 
ground of the difference in their economic and so^ 
clal duties and the importance to the state of con- 

1 198 u. S. 45. 



64 Ideals of America 

serving their strength. This view has not been 
universal, however, as is evidenced by the decision 
of the Supreme Court of Illinois in 1895 by which 
it was held that an act limiting the hours of labor 
of women in factories to eight hours a day in- 
vaded the fundamental right of a citizen to make 
his own contract.^ 

This seems now like a voice from the distant 
past though only a score of years has gone by. 
Those years, however, have been eventful years. 
In 1 9 10 a law limiting the hours of woman's la- 
bor in factories to ten hours a day was sustained 
by the same court on the principle that the physi- 
cal structure and maternal functions of women jus- 
tify the discrimination between men and women, 
and hence that the act was a valid exercise of the 
police power of the state.^ The earlier case was 
not overruled in terms. It was *' distinguished" 
(lawyers will readily understand what that 
means) but the principle that It was an indefensi- 
ble violation of the right to contract, announced 
with such earnestness in that case, was uncere- 
moniously relegated to the lumber room of the 
law. 

Oregon and California passed similar laws and 
both were sustained by the respective home courts 
and taken to the Supreme Court of the United 

1 Ritchie v. People, 155 Ills. 98. 

2 Ritchie v. V/ayman, 244 Ills. 509. 



Ideals in Law 65 

States where the Fourteenth Amendment to the 
Federal Constitution (though it had been work- 
ing more than ten hours a day for many years) 
was again relied on to defeat the laws. Both 
statutes were, however, sustained; the Oregon 
statute in 1898^ and the California statute in 
19 15.2 A single extract from the late Mr. Jus- 
tice Brewer's opinion in the first of these cases 
will show its quality and also show how fully the 
idea of the power of the state to protect itself 
and correct inequalities of opportunity and ability 
among its citizens has now been accepted by the 
highest court in the land. He says, 

That woman's physical structure and the performance 
of maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the 
struggle for subsistence Is obvious. This Is especially true 
when the burdens of motherhood are upon her. Even 
when they are not, by abundant testimony of the medical 
fraternity, continuance for a long time on her feet at 
work, repeating this from day to day tends to Injurious 
effects upon the body, and as healthy mothers are essential 
to vigorous offspring, the physical well-being becomes an 
object of public Interest and care In order to preserve the 
strength and vigor of the race. 

The question whether laws limiting hours of 
labor for men in employments not specially dan- 
gerous or exceptional In some other way are 
within the police power cannot be said to be set- 

1 Muller V. Oregon, 208 U. S. 412. 

2 Miller v. Wilson, 336 U. S. 373. 



66 Ideals of America 

tied. There certainly are a considerable number 
of decisions in the negative. In 1914 the Supreme 
Court of Oregon sustained a law providing for a 
ten hour day for males In factories.^ The court 
said that it could not be said that the law would 
not promote the peace, health, and general wel- 
fare of the citizens of the state. This judgment 
was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United 
States in April, 1917.^ In Massachusetts, how- 
ever, In 19 1 5, a law which provided that em- 
ployees In and about railway stations should not 
be employed for more than nine working hours 
in ten hours time, the additional hour to be al- 
lowed as a lay-off, was held to be an unwarrant- 
able Interference with Individual liberty and prop- 
erty rights and therefore contrary to constitutions 
which secure these fundamental rights.^ The lan- 
guage sounds familiar. I venture to hazard a 
guess that It will grow less familiar as the years 
go on. 

The material at hand relating to this class of 
legislation Is very large In amount and very in- 
teresting In character but the limitations of space 
Tvill not permit. Nor can I attempt to review the 
various other classes of laws which have been 
put upon the statute books In recent years in- 



^ State V. Bunting, 71 Ore. 259. 

2 Bunting v. State, 24-? U. S. 426. 

3 Com. V. B. k M. R. R., no N. E. 264. 



Ideals in Law 67 

tended to ameliorate the condition of the laborer, 
or to remove the real or supposed handicaps un- 
der which he labors. Reference may perhaps 
be made to one very significant class of laws 
which has come into being within a very few 
years in very many states, I. e., the workmen's com- 
pensation or social insurance acts. 

These laws were passed in response to a very 
widespread public demand. Prior to their pas- 
sage, whenever a workman was injured and could 
not agree with his employer as to the responsi- 
bility for the injury or the terms of settlement, he 
was obliged to sue the employer, go through all 
the courts, divide the verdict (if any) with his 
lawyer, and come out at the end of long months 
and probably years of waiting either with a sum 
of money more or less adequate or with a decision 
that he was entitled to nothing, because he him- 
self had been negligent, had assumed the risk, or 
had worked with a negligent fellow-servant. This 
remedy was a relic of earlier and much simpler 
days; the days of manual labor, of the small shop 
with few employees, simple machinery, and In- 
frequent accidents. Modern Industrial develop- 
ment requires, however, that the workman carry 
on his toil in company with veritable armies of 
fellow-men, many of whom he can neither know 
nor see; it surrounds him with mighty and com- 
plicated machinery driven by forces whose relent- 



68 Ideals of America 

less strength rivals that of the thunderbolt itself, 
and it requires him to labor day by day with fac- 
ulties at high tension in places where death lurks 
in ambush at his elbow awaiting only a moment's 
inadvertence before it strikes. It has created an 
army of injured and dying with constantly swell- 
ing ranks marching with halting step and dimming 
eyes to the great hereafter. Legislate as we may 
along the line of stringent requirements for safety 
devices this army will still increase. To speak of 
the common law personal injury action as a rem- 
edy for the problem is to jest with serious sub- 
jects, to give a stone to him who asks for bread. 
To meet this burning question the Workmen's 
Compensation Acts have come into being. Differ- 
ent in their details, they have some characteris- 
tics in common. Generally speaking they provide 
that all industrial accidents resulting in injuries to 
workingmen shall be compensated for by the em- 
ployer at specified rates during the time of dis- 
ability, those rates being determined upon a basis 
of a given percentage of the wages of the injured 
person; if death results, other definite standards 
of indemnity to be paid to the surviving depend- 
ents are provided. The procedure is simple; a 
claim is made before an administrative board or 
judge, and the matter is taken up quickly and 
without legal machinery, the award is made and 
can only be attacked on the ground of fraud or 



Ideals in Law 69 

because there was really no evidence to sustain it. 

These acts have been generally, though not 
universally, sustained when attacked as unconsti- 
tutional. The reason, doubtless, is that they have 
generally been made elective in form, i, e., em- 
ployers could elect whether they would come in 
under them or not, and thus if they chose to come 
in they could not complain of any infringement 
of their rights to have due process of law because 
they had voluntarily consented to come under the 
terms of the law. It is true that election to accept 
the law was made attractive by a somewhat in- 
genious provision having some of the character- 
istics of a club, to wit, a provision that the em- 
ployer who chose to remain outside of the law 
should not have the benefit, in a personal injury 
action, of one or two or all of the time-honored 
defenses, known as contributory negligence, as- 
sumption of risk, and negligence of a fellow- 
servant. 

These laws have worked well; nominally the 
employer pays for all injuries, in reality he in- 
sures himself in an accident insurance com.pany 
(which takes charge of and pays the claims made) 
and adds the cost of insurance to the cost of his 
manufactured product. In the end, therefore, 
the public pays, and when all of the states have 
similar laws all employers will be on an equal 
basis. 



70 Ideals of America 

Such laws are already in force In forty-one 
states and territories and the Federal Govern- 
ment has an act for its employees. The New 
York law did not have the elective feature as to 
certain employments and was held unconstitu- 
tional by the highest court of that state In the 
year 1911/ because it deprived the employer of 
property without due process of law In that it im- 
posed on him a liability without his consent and 
without his fault. Since that decision was made, 
however, the state constitution has been amended 
so as expressly to authorize such a law and an- 
other law of similar nature has been passed and 
upheld by the court of appeals of New York.- 
The compensation laws of New York, Washing- 
ton, and Iowa have been sustained by the Supreme 
Court of the United States and have thus survived 
the acid test of the Fourteenth Amendment. The 
first two of these laws are compulsory and the 
last one elective.^ 

Much more might, and really ought to be said, 
concerning labor legislation, but I must pay at- 
tention to some other fields of legislation before 
closing this paper. I stop now only to observe 
that the Idea that safety and health should be 
promoted in all working places has taken full 

1 Ives V. S. B. R. Co., 201 N. Y. 271. 

2 Jensen v. S, P. Co., 215 N. Y. 514. 

3N. Y. C. R. R. Co. V. White, 243 U. S. 188; M. T. Co. v. 
Washington, Id., 219; Hawkins v. Bleakley, Id., 210. 



Ideals in Law 7i 

possession of the public mind and to this end legisla- 
tion providing for the use of the best safety de- 
vices, the guarding of all dangerous machinery, 
the prevention so far as possible of occupational 
diseases, the providing of safe, sanitary, and 
healthful shops has become practically universal, 
nor has such legislation been seriously attacked 
in the courts. Its validity as a proper exercise of 
the police power is quite beyond question. In the 
more advanced states these laws are framed in 
general terms requiring in substance that places 
of employment and exposed machinery be made 
safe and the administrative details are committed 
to a permanent body or commission which has 
power to inspect and determine what is safe and 
what is not safe. This commission calls to its aid 
the experience of both employer and employee as 
well as the knowledge of the expert and formu- 
lates the administrative details in the shape of 
regulations which have the force of law. Thus 
the adjustment to new conditions and changing 
methods becomes easy and prompt. There need 
be no long waiting for legislative action. 

The subject of labor unions, strikes, lockouts, 
boycotts, and other contests between employer 
and employee covers so large a field that it is 
manifestly impossible to give it treatment. I 
would not be understood as minimizing its vast 
importance but that very fact makes a mere brief 



72 Ideals of America 

discussion all the more unfitting. Furthermore 
the controversies on these subjects are still acute. 
Only in the most general way can there be said 
to be any general public ideals. It may be safely 
asserted that the general public desires to be fair 
both to employer and employee; it believes that 
the employee has a right to organize, to strike 
if he be dissatisfied, and to be free from black- 
listing; it does not believe that he is entitled to 
resort to violence to gain his ends, nor does it be- 
lieve that it should be possible for the whole pub- 
lic to suffer great inconvenience and loss because 
of a disagreement between employer and em- 
ployee. 

The laws which will work out substantial jus- 
tice to employer and employee while protecting 
the public have not yet been perfected although 
there has been much legislation. The histo- 
rian or essayist of the future may perhaps be 
able to record the satisfactory solution of these 
questions. Certainly it Is not possible now. 

Passing from the consideration of labor prob- 
lems and conditions, I would direct your thought 
for a moment to the very general public awaken- 
ing on the subject of housing, sanitation, and liv- 
ing conditions In the great cities. The slum and 
the crowded tenement house are In many respects 
the foulest products of modern civilization, for In 
them the race is poisoned at the source; yet for 



Ideals in Law 73 



many years they passed practically without notice; 
they were hardly fit subjects to be mentioned in 
good society; nor was it realized that the state 
owed any duty to its poorer citizens to make con- 
ditions of life more healthful or endurable, and 
still less was it realized that the state had a selfish 
interest in the health of its citizens which would 
demand that something be done to remove such 
ulcers as these from the body politic. In most, 
if not all, of the states containing large cities 
where these problems are acute, the regulation 
of tenement building is now quite complete; hu- 
man habitations must be provided with certain 
specified sanitary fittings and be built under cer- 
tain rules as to light, ventilation, and ground 
space. Legislation in this line is rarely questioned 
in the courts, nor is it perceived how it could be 
successfully attacked. Playgrounds are appear- 
ing where there were none before, the old-time 
slum is certainly being crowded out, the city child 
is to be given a chance, the city worker is to have 
light, air, and healthful surroundings, the city 
itself is ultimately to become, not perhaps a 
place where every prospect pleases, but most 
certainly a place where even the poorest may 
live comfortably and happily under sanitary con- 
ditions and freed from repulsive and degrading 
surroundings. 

The city of the future is still a dream city; its 



74 Ideals of America 

domes and lofty towers gleam only in the Imagi- 
nation of the enthusiast, but they will come in 
time. 

The Federal Supreme Court recently rendered 
a decision which goes far to remove the bogey of 
the Fourteenth Amendment from the path of the 
city planner. The city of Los Angeles passed an 
ordinance prohibiting the manufacture of brick 
within a certain specified section. Its constitu- 
tionality was attacked under the due process and 
equal protection provisions of the Fourteenth 
Amendment. The court held it valid as a proper 
exercise of the police power, and used these very 
forcible words: 

It IS to be remembered that we are dealing with one 
of the most essential powers of government, one that is 
least Hmitable. It may Indeed seem harsh In Its exercise, 
it usually is on some individual, but the imperative neces- 
sity for its existence precludes any limitation on it when 
not exerted arbitrarily. A vested interest cannot be as- 
serted against it because of conditions once obtaining. 
.... To so hold would preclude development and 
fix a city forever in its primitive conditions. There must 
be progress and if, in its march, private interests are in the 
way, they must yield to the good of the community; the 
logical result of the petitioner's contention would seem to 
be that a city could not be formed or enlarged against 
the resistance of an occupant of the ground, and that if it 
grows at all it can only grow as the environment of the 
occupations that are usually banished to the purlieus.^ 

^ Hadacheck v. Los Angeles, 239 U. S. 394. 



Ideals in Law 75 

No more categorical and emphatic statement 
that private interests, even though vested, must 
give way to the good of the community has been 
made anywhere than this pronouncement made by 
the tribunal which has the last and decisive word 
on the subject. That this tribunal has responded 
to the thought of the time there can be no doubt. 

Among the prevailing ideas of the present day 
enumerated at the beginning of this paper, was 
the idea that public utilities must be regulated by 
law both as to their rates and as to the quality of 
their service if the great public is to be properly 
served. Of this I would speak very briefly al- 
though the subject is one on which volumes might 
be written. 

The prevalence of the idea is due to our de- 
pendence upon our public utilities and this is com- 
paratively a modern development. A century ago 
the public utility had not come; life was simple. 
Individual wants few, and Individual resources 
generally sufl^cient to provide for them. The or- 
dinary citizen knew little about gas and less about 
electricity; he drove his own horse, if fortunate 
enough to possess one, drank water from his own 
well, had no telephone, sent no telegrams, used 
no railroad, sent no express packages, and prac- 
tically was independent of any public utility. No 
such life Is possible today, however. We must cat- 
alogue our public utilities and try to imagine how 



76 Ideals of A^n erica 

we would get along without them if we would real- 
ize our dependence on them. Neither modern 
business nor modern life could go on without 
them. The urban citizen of today goes to his 
business upon the city traction system, transacts 
his business with the aid of the telephone and tele- 
graph, the express company, and the commercial 
railway. Gas and electric companies light his 
home, cook his meals, furnish his power for do- 
mestic operations, while water companies furnish 
him with water and telephone companies put him 
in communication with friends at home or abroad. 

Many of these utilities are and must be monop- 
olies and the necessity that the public be safe- 
guarded from imposition, extortion, or poor serv- 
ice on the part of the utilities is patent to anyone. 
The power of the legislature, both to regulate the 
service and fix the rates of service is fully and 
freely admitted, subject only to the exception that 
rates must not be put so low nor service regula- 
tions made so drastic as to be confiscatory, and 
to the further limitation that no state regulations 
can affect Interstate commerce. 

Most, If not all, of the states have legislated 
In this direction and so also has the Federal Gov- 
ernment. Time will not permit any review of 
such legislation; in most instances the laws are 
administered by a board or commission which has 
power to make regulations and administrative or- 



I 



Ideals in Law 77 



ders, thus applying to particular cases and con- 
crete facts the abstract provisions of the basic 
law. So long as such provisions are not confisca- 
tory the acts of the commissions are fully sus- 
tained by the courts. 

It Is manifestly Impossible for me to do more 
than mention the legislative activities, both state 
and federal, framed and intended to conserve our 
great natural resources In the way of minerals, 
waterpowers, forests, coal, and land; to provide 
for reforestation of cut-over areas; to provide 
for larger contributions to the public revenues by 
graded Income taxes, inheritance taxes, and priv- 
ilege taxes of various kinds; to introduce more 
humane and scientific methods Into our adminis- 
tration of the criminal laws; to make the admin- 
istration of justice generally more efficient, rapid, 
and satisfactory by Improving the quality of the 
bench, removing the pitfalls In practice, and mak- 
ing procedure a means and not an end; to prevent 
monopolistic combinations of capital and re- 
straint of competition; to prevent adulteration of 
food and the fraudulent imposition of quack medi- 
cines on the people; and to prevent the exploita- 
tion of corporate stocks and bonds with no value 
behind them. All of these activities bear witness 
more or less directly to the awakened public con- 
science of the last quarter century. Any one of them 
would furnish material for a separate chapter. 



78 Ideals of America 

This paper should not close, however, without 
at least a reference to the drift toward a more 
pronounced democracy which we have witnessed 
during the last score of years, especially in the 
western states. This drift is evidenced by the 
very general adoption of the direct primary for 
the nomination of all elective officers; the consti- 
tutional amendment for the election of United 
States senators by popular vote; the establish- 
ment in some states of the initiative and refer- 
endum in very comprehensive form; the institu- 
tion of the recall, including in some instances the 
judiciary as well as other officers; and the adop- 
tion of equal suffrage in many of the states. 
Much of this new legislation Is hasty and to the 
last degree experimental. That any such direct 
and extensive control of governmental processes 
by the body of the electorate as Is provided for 
by many of these laws will improve govern- 
mental conditions or be practicable in operation Is 
a subject open to grave question. The argument 
In its favor Is an attractive one; It appeals to the 
pride of the people to be assured that all political 
and governmental defects can be removed by giv- 
ing the people direct control, but the truth of the 
proposition has yet to be demonstrated and It will 
take many years to demonstrate It, If Indeed it 
be capable of demonstration. Speaking for my- 
self I simply say that on these subjects (except 



Ideals in Law 79 

the single subject of equal suffrage) I am not yet 
convinced. 

To me the future of triumphant democracy lies 
not that way, but rather In the way of less fre- 
quent elections, a shorter ballot, the election of a 
few officers specially fitted by education and training 
for their offices, invested with power to ap- 
point and remove subordinates and made respon- 
sible for results. The people will retain their 
power by retaining control of the heads of de- 
partments, not by attempting to select and remove 
all subordinate officers. 

We are certainly living in a time of great men- 
tal activity. There Is much hurrying to and fro; 
a Babel-like confusion of voices arises from the 
great field of human endeavor; there seems little 
concerted movement; reformers arise here and 
there proclaiming the virtues of their own par- 
ticular measures of reform and denouncing the 
nostrums of others. Some are doubtless real re- 
formers and patriots while some are merely self- 
seekers, but the distinction is not always easy to 
be made. There is everywhere a confusion of 
tongues, the currents of thought seem to cross 
each other and unity of action seems impossible. 
Are we mere pleasure lovers and dollar chasers? 
Have we any high and dominating ideal? Ts 
there any elevated purpose, any lofty conception 
of human betterment which is in control and which 



8o Ideals of America 

is being worked out in spite of the confusion, the 
contradictions, the garments rolled in blood, the 
thunder of the captains, and the shouting? It is 
not easy to say, yet I have faith to believe that, 
after all the great American nation is sound at 
heart and that we have some visions which are 
being expressed in law. Among them is pre- 
eminently the vision of a real equality of citizen- 
ship; not the abstract equality before the kvv^ pro- 
claimed by the declaration of independence and 
the constitutions, but an equality resulting from 
the frank recognition of the fact that men are 
born unequal in opportunity, ability, and environ- 
ment, and that it is the greatest function of the 
state to equalize the conditions as far as may be 
possible, not merely by the philanthropic work, 
but by the curbing of privilege of any kind and by 
subjecting the unrestrained individual liberty of 
former years to the limitations necessary to ac- 
complish the greatest good to the community. In 
other words, by putting into complete operation 
the maxim of the Roman law. Sic iitere tiio lit ali- 
enum non laedas. 

Can this be accomplished? I think so; but 
surely not unless God shall give us men and women 
cast in heroic mold; men and women endowed not 
only with the understanding heart, which feels 
and appreciates the conditions of the present, but 
with the philosophic mind which weighs with just 



Ideals in Law 8i 

discrimination the accumulated experiences of the 
past; men and women who can withal lift up their 
eyes in abiding faith to the hill tops of the future 
which even now are touched and glorified by the 
light of the approaching day. 



IV 
Ideals in Labor 



IV 
IDEALS IN LABOR 

By John P. Frey, Editor International Holders' Journal 

IT HAS seemed to some superficial observers 
that organized labor's ideals consist of noth- 
ing more than higher wages, shorter hours of 
labor, more control, and additional rules and reg- 
ulations affecting employment. Perhaps the ideals 
which have guided the trade-union movement of 
our country are not generally known to the pub- 
lic because trade-unionists have been more busily 
engaged in working for their attainment than in 
crystallizing them Into set phrases. 

In discussing labor's ideals, or the ideals of 
any other group, it must be borne in mind that 
human activities are influenced by more than one 
motive and that it may be possible to lose sight of 
the ideals which have Influenced men because 
other motives also may have actuated them. We 
justly honor and approve the Ideals of freedom 
and independence which inspired the American 
colonists during the Revolutionary War, yet with- 
out doubt some of those who were genuine patri- 
ots did not lose sight of the broad acres they 

85 



86 Ideals of America 

might be able to secure or the public offices which 
they might hold should the effort for independence 
succeed. These motives, however, if they ex- 
isted, did not necessarily dim the high ideal for 
which they risked their fortunes and their lives. 

One Sunday, soon after I became a member of 
my local union, I went to Boston to secure advice 
from John F. O'Sullivan, who, in addition to his 
newspaper work, was actively engaged in organ- 
izing and assisting the trade-union movement In 
Massachusetts. At his home I was Introduced to 
Frank K. Foster, one of the most brilliant laymen 
whom the American trade-union movement has 
produced. While we were talking, a rap came at 
the door and I had the pleasure of meeting Henry 
Abrahams, who for over twenty-five years had 
been secretary of the local Cigar Makers' Union 
and who had served the Central Labor Union of 
Boston as its secretary for over twenty-five years. 

It seemed strange to me to find an Irishman 
and a Roman Catholic, a descendant of the old 
New England stock and a Protestant, and a man 
whose ancestors had heard the thunders of Mt. 
Sinai, greet each other as though they were mem- 
bers of an affectionate family and then devote 
an afternoon to the discussion of ways and means 
of obtaining legislation which would prevent In- 
justice from being done to the wage earners of 
Massachusetts, male and female, union and non- 



Ideals in Labor 87 

union alike. I was able to understand that 
something which these men had acquired as trade- 
unionists enabled them to feel that there was no 
division between them because of ancestry, race, 
religion, or political affiliations, but that in the 
interest of all those who toil, they were as one. 

The public gathers its limited knowledge of 
trade-unionism mostly from newspaper items and 
editorial comment, particularly when some acute 
industrial dispute is In progress. It knows little, 
if anything, about the activities which are car- 
ried on every day, year by year. Practically all 
trade-unions, for instance, have committees who 
visit sick members, attend to their wants, and see 
that comforts and necessities are provided. The 
newspapers seldom tell of the beds endowed by 
trade-unions in the hospitals of our cities. The 
public Is unaware of the enormous sums of money 
contributed voluntarily by trade-unions for the 
purpose of assisting the distressed of their own 
and other organizations. 

What Is Implied by these activities? Is It not 
that the trade-union movement has brotherhood 
as one of Its ideals, brotherhood so broad and so 
deep that it obliterates the lines of nationality, 
race, creed, politics — brotherhood which extends 
without reservation to all of the toilers of the 
world? The space at my disposal will not allow 
me to present the unbounded material evidence 



88 Ideals of America 

which Indicates the existence of this ideal of 
brotherhood, but I cannot pass without calling 
attention to some evidences with which you should 
be made familiar. 

For many years, members of the Typograph- 
ical Union have maintained a home in Colorado 
Springs, where without cost members afflicted witH 
tuberculosis or whose health has been otherwise 
impaired are given the care of skilled physicians 
and a home where comfort and kindliness sur- 
round them like sunshine falling upon the flowers. 
The Pressmen's Union maintains a similar insti- 
tution in Rogersville, Tenn. 

Many of our unions pay out enormous sums 
each year in sick and death benefits to their mem- 
bers. The International Molders' Union of 
North America up to December 31, 19 18, had 
paid out $3,303,564.85 to its members in sick 
benefits alone; other large sums had been paid 
for death and disability benefits. In the year 
1917-18, the national and international unions af- 
filiated with the American Federation of Labor 
paid out to their members $3,658,000 in death, 
sick, traveling, and unemployment benefits, and 
this sum does not take into account the enormous 
amounts paid out to members from local treas- 
uries. 

Trade-unionism in America is international. 
The boundary line to the north does not exist so 



Ideals in Labor 89 

far as our unions are concerned. The delegates 
from Canada and the United States meet as mem- 
bers of but one organization. They have but one 
trade-union constitution; they have but one set 
of officers; there Is but one treasury into which 
their dues are placed, and so far as their activi- 
ties as trade-unionists are concerned, they are 
members of but one organization. But In a still 
broader sense the American trade-union move- 
ment is international, for it has always maintained 
friendly cooperative relations with the great la- 
bor bodies of the world. These conditions serve 
to indicate the progress which the trade-unionists 
of the world have made toward their Ideal of 
brotherhood. 

If we were to examine the constitutions of 
those trade-unions representing skilled or semi- 
skilled trades, we would find they contain pro- 
visions for the education of apprentices. Some, 
we would discover, provide that the apprentice, 
after a certain time, must be placed at work be- 
tween two journeymen, so that he can have their 
assistance in qualifying himself as a craftsman. 
We would find other organizations providing for 
the technical education of apprentices. Again, we 
would discover local efforts, such as that in Chi- 
cago, through which some of the unions, the car- 
penters for instance, have made special provision 
for the education of their members, as well as of 



90 Ideals of America 

the apprentices, In the theory and practice of their 
craft. 

Some of the International unions, finding no 
other satisfactory medium, have established 
schools of their own, one of the best known being 
that organized by the Typographical Union, in 
which through a correspondence course the mem- 
bers are taught the theory and the art of their 
craft. The Pressmen's Union has established a 
school at its headquarters and members from all 
over the United States and Canada go to Rogers- 
vllle, Tennessee, to increase their proficiency and 
acquire a broader knowledge of their trade. Dur- 
ing the winter months, many local unions hold 
courses of lectures for the education of their mem- 
bers. 

For reasons which it is unnecessary to discuss 
at this time, the trade-union movement of the 
United States has never been given the degree of 
credit to which it is entitled for the prominent, if 
not predominant, part which it has played in the 
establishing of our public school system. But a 
few years ago, the wage-earner's child was prac- 
tically a charity pupil, the opportunities for an 
adequate education being confined almost exclu- 
sively to the children of the well-to-do. The his- 
tory of trade-unionism In this country from 1825 
to 1835 ^s filled with evidence that the trade- 
unions of that period were carrying on a tremen- 



Ideals in Labor 91 

dous campaign, which had for Its purpose the 
establishing of a public school system, supported 
and directed by the state, which would guarantee 
to every wage-earner's child the opportunity of 
obtaining at least an elementary education. 

At a mass meeting of trade-unionists held In 
New York City In December, 1829, the following 
resolution was adopted: 

Resolved: That next to life and liberty, we consider 
education the greatest blessing bestowed upon mankind. 

Resolved: That the public funds should be appro- 
priated to a reasonable extent for the purpose of education 
upon a regular system that shall Insure the opportunity 
to every individual of obtaining a competent education 
before he should have arrived at the age of maturity. 

In September of the same year, a mass meeting 
of trade-unionists In Philadelphia adopted reso- 
lutions of like Import, the preamble of which 
read: 

No system of education which a free man can accept has 
yet been established for the poor, whilst thousands of 
dollars of public money have been appropriated for colleges 
and academies for the rich. 

At a trade-union meeting held In Boston in 
1830, It was resolved: 

That the establishment of a liberal system of education 
obtainable by all should be among the first efforts of 
every lawgiver who desires the continuance of our national 
independence. 



92 Ideals of America 

And shortly afterwards the general trade -union 
movement of Cincinnati issued an appeal to the 
West stating that their efforts would be directed 
toward elevating the condition of the workmen 
and obtaining a national system of education. 
The trade-unions have been foremost in working 
for the passage of legislation providing free text- 
books. One of the prime motives which has led 
to extended trade-union activities for the preven- 
tion of child labor has been the intention that the 
children of the poor should secure at least an ele- 
mentary education before facing the problems of 
life. 

But the trade-unions go further than this in 
their efforts to educate their members. Their lit- 
erature includes the discussion of civic problems, 
civic duties and responsibilities, economics, soci- 
ology, and industrial history. Continual efforts 
are made to teach members those principles of 
self-government which are essential to every citi- 
zen. No group in the community has realized 
more keenly that education is essential to their 
welfare and that without education their ideals 
are unattainable. Trade-unionists look upon edu- 
cation In its broadest sense as one of the corner- 
stones upon which the structure of trade-unionism 
is erected. 

Education then, In its truest and broadest sense, 
is one of the ideals of labor. As evidence, let me 



Ideals in Labor 93 

quote a few sentences from the report of the 
Committee on Education which was unanimously 
adopted at the convention of the American Fed- 
eration of Labor held in San Francisco in 19 15. 
The committee reported: 

Education is necessarily the foundation of any republic. 
Education is necessary to the perpetuity of any republic; 
it is therefore the essential duty of this republic to guar- 
antee every child an adequate education. Everybody 
believes in education. Differences arise, not upon its 
value, but upon the questions oi what a true education 
should consist of, who should be educated, how far and 
by what methods they should be educated, and what per- 
sons should conduct such education. 

Education should include whatever we do for our- 
selves and whatever is done for us by others, and for the 
express purpose of bringing us nearer to the perfection of 
our nature. In its largest conception, education should 
comprehend even the indirect effects produced on char- 
acter and on the human faculties by things by which the 
direct purposes are different, by law, by forms of govern- 
ment, by industrial arts, and by modes of social, economic, 
and civic life. Education should comprehend the culture 
which each generation gives to those who are to be its 
successors. In order to best qualify them for at least keep- 
ing up and. If possible, for raising the improvement of 
humankind which has been attained. 

It may appear to those who have not seen be- 
neath the surface that the trade-union ideal is 
simply higher and higher wages, shorter and 
shorter hours of labor, more control in Industry 
and additional rules and regulations affecting la- 



94 Ideals of America 

bor. It has even been held by some economists 
that the wage earner in securing an advance in 
wages is in effect acquiring what the stockholder 
secures when dividends are increased. 

But what we must understand, if we are to 
grasp the trade-union ideal, is the trade-union 
viewpoint. What is it that the trade-unionist aims 
to secure through an advance in wages? What 
do shorter hours of labor mean to him, and why 
does he struggle so persistently and courageously 
to secure both? What are wages? What do 
they mean to the wage earner? 

They are not so many dollars and so many 
cents — they are the man's life, they are the fac- 
tor which determines what measure of decency, 
of comfort, and of opportunity the wage earner 
will have in this life. The amount of these wages 
determines whether the home shall be a back 
room in a crowded tenement district or whether 
it shall be a separate dwelling surrounded by pure 
air and sunshine and conducive to health and com- 
fort. 

These dollars and cents which come in the 
weekly pay envelope determine the quality and 
the quantity of the food which shall enter the 
home. They determine the comforts and con- 
veniences and opportunities which the wage- 
earner's family can enjoy. They determine the 
wage-earner's standard of living. They deter- 



Ideals in Labor 95 

mine whether his body shall be nourished and vig- 
orous or whether it shall be underfed and weak- 
ened. These wages determine still more — they 
determine the physical, the mental, and the moral 
standards of the overwhelming majority in all of 
our industrial centers. If there is anything in the 
realm of human activities which has been incon- 
trovertibly demonstrated by scientific investiga- 
tion during recent years, it is that wages pro- 
foundly influence physical and mental standards. 

The vital statistics of both Europe and Amer- 
ica demonstrate that the home environment and 
the quality of the food largely determine the phys- 
ical and mental characteristics of the toilers and 
determine also the degree of vitality with which 
their children enter into this world. 

A recent federal investigation in Montclair, 
N. J., indicated that the average infant mortality 
was eighty-four per thousand, but in the homes 
where the lower-paid workers lived the rate was 
one hundred and thirty per thousand, that where 
the income to the family was twelve dollars per 
v/eek the death rate was twice as large as where 
the income was twenty-three dollars or more. 
Analyzing still further, it was found that where 
the fathers were business or professional men the 
infant mortality was but forty-one per thousand. 
Among the higher-paid workers the infant death 
rate was seventy-four, while in the families of 



96 Ideals of America 

the less skilled and lower paid it rose to one hun- 
dred and one. 

In Johnstown, Pa., In a residential ward where 
comfort and wealth abound, the infant mortality 
was but fifty per thousand, while in the tenement 
district, where the lower-paid workers were forced 
to live, the death rate was two hundred and sev- 
enty-one per thousand. The report of the med- 
ical officer of Finsbury, London, for 1906 shows 
that the death rate of adults In the one-room tene- 
ments was thirty-nine per thousand while In tene- 
ments of four or more rooms It was but sixteen 
and four-tenths per thousand. The same report 
indicated that the infant mortality in the one-room 
tenements was two hundred and eleven per thou- 
sand while in the four-room tenements it was but 
one hundred and twenty-one. In the Inquiry made 
by the Local Government Board of London In 
19 10, it was found that the death rate was fifteen 
per cent greater In back to back houses built In 
long rows. Statistics compiled In England some 
years ago indicated that the children of the lower- 
paid workers, at sixteen years of age, weighed 
nineteen and a half pounds less and were three 
and three-quarters inches lower In stature than the 
children of the well-to-do. 

What do wages mean to the worker? They 
mean his very life, the quality of the blood that 
flows through his veins and nourishes his body. 



Ideals in Labor 97 

the degree of vitality with which his children shall 
enter this world. They determine his physical 
and mental welfare In a predominating manner. 

Why does the trade-unionist struggle for a 
shorter work day? Let the trade-unionists speak 
for themselves. They desire a shorter work day 
among other things so that there may be oppor- 
tunity for leisure and recreation. They desire 
to terminate each day's labor with sufficient vital- 
ity left to enjoy the society of their fellow-men, 
to prepare themselves better, through study, for 
the problems which face them as wage earners, 
to enjoy some of the blessings which the Almighty 
has so bounteously spread at every hand. 

The American wage earner knows from prac- 
tical experience what it means to labor from sun 
to sun, what it means to give most of the waking 
hours to hard manual toll, what It means to re- 
turn home so tired, so exhausted from the day's 
labor, that all his being cries out for rest. The 
trade-unionist has learned that housing conditions, 
the quality and quantity of the food, the sanitary 
conditions of the shop, wages, and the hours of 
labor not only affect his Immediate physical well- 
being and reflect themselves In the well-being of 
his offspring, but that they also very largely In- 
fluence his length of life. 

I know of no more convincing statistics on this 
point than those presented by the Cigar Makers' 



98 Ideals of America 

and the Typographical Unions from their records 
of death benefits paid to members. In 1888, 
fifty-one per cent of the deaths among union cigar 
makers were from tuberculosis, in 191 1 this had 
been reduced to twenty per cent. In 1888, the 
average age at death of members of this union 
was thirty-one years, four months, and ten days; 
in 191 1, the last year from which this data has 
been worked out, the average age at death had 
been Increased to fifty years, one month, and ten 
days. In 1900 the average age at death of mem- 
bers of the Typographical Union was forty-one 
years and three months, and in 19 15 it was prac- 
tically fifty years and eleven months. During 
these periods the eleven, ten, and nine hour day 
had been displaced for the eight hour day, better 
sanitary conditions had been established in the 
shops, and the wage rate had been considerably 
advanced, in some cases almost doubled. These 
Improved conditions had reduced deaths from 
tuberculosis over fifty per cent; they had length- 
ened the average life of union cigar makers nine- 
teen years, and the average life of printers over 
nine years. 

It is because of such facts that the trade-union- 
ists see something more than dividends in wages. 
They see their very life and that of their descend- 
ants determined by the money In the weekly pay 
envelope and profoundly influenced by the hours 



Ideals in Labor 99 

of labor during which they are called upon to toil. 
The trade-union movement believes that man was 
made for something more than mere labor, eating, 
and sleeping. It believes that opportunities for 
self-development are as important as labor and 
that, unless the wage earner is afforded opportu- 
nities for recreation and self-development, the 
standards of the mass of our people will go down- 
ward and backward instead of upward and for- 
ward. 

The term I am about to use may not adequately 
describe the ideal which the trade-unionist has in 
mind when he endeavors to increase his earnings 
and shorten his hours of labor, but for the present 
let me call it "the ideal of a standard of living." 
The trade-unions believe that childhood should 
be dedicated to growth, play, and education, youth 
to character building, and manhood to the devel- 
opment of the highest qualities of citizenship. 
The wage-earners' standard of living, which rests 
so largely upon the wages received and upon the 
hours of labor, determines the physical, mental, 
and moral foundations of the masses upon which 
the structure of our American institutions must 
rest. 

The masses of those who labor in our indus- 
tries constitute the foundation upon which our 
American institutions are erected and the trade- 
union ideal aims to make this foundation deeper, 



loo Ideals of America 

broader, more secure than It ever has been In the 
past, by continually elevating and advancing the 
standard of living through higher wages and 
shorter hours of labor. 

There Is but one more Ideal which I desire to 
place before you at this time, and this Is the Ideal 
of freedom — human freedom, freedom In the In- 
dustries, democracy In the government of Indus- 
try, equivalent to democracy In the government of 
our country. No Ideal has urged organized labor 
forward more energetically than that of Indus- 
trial freedom. The trade-unionist's Ideal Is the 
full application of the principles and mechanisms 
of democracy In the Industries and In the relation- 
ship between employer and employee. Freedom 
Is essential to the workers' development and the 
trade-unionist can see no practical way of estab- 
lishing industrial liberty except through the meth- 
ods of Industrial democracy. Labor's Ideal Is 
freedom — freedom to work out Its own salvation. 
Brotherhood and education are essential ideals, 
but without Industrial freedom it would be Im- 
possible to achieve the Ideals of a steadily pro- 
gressing standard of living. 

Since the Dark Ages there have been three 
great struggles for the ideals of liberty. One was 
for religious freedom, the right to worship the 
Almighty according to the dictates of one's con- 
science, and some of the bloodiest wars which his- 



Ideals in Labor loi 

tory records were fought for liberty of conscience 
and the right to worship the Almighty as men 
pleased. 

But liberty of conscience was not enough. 
While one set of men had It within their power 
to determine the laws under which others must 
live, men could not develop as they should and 
tyranny flourished. And so other wars were 
fought, thrones were overturned and dynasties 
passed away In the struggle which men made for 
the right of political freedom, the right to have 
their voices count In the making of the laws 
under which they must live. 

And while these contests were being waged, 
labor passed from slavery to serfdom, serfdom 
to peonage, and peonage to freedom, but the free- 
dom accorded to worklngmen In the Industries 
was not that same quality or degree of freedom 
which was theirs in religion and politics. The 
wage earner is not industrially free, cannot be 
industrially free, so long as employing capital, by 
itself and without let or hindrance, fixes the terms 
of employment and the conditions of labor. And 
so the trade-union movement has exerted itself 
in the past and Is using its efforts today without 
ceasing to establish a condition under which gov- 
ernment in the industries, like the government of 
our country, shall exist only by and with the con- 
sent of the governed. 



I02 Ideals of America 



The trade-union ideal is equality for employer 
and worker, equality before the law, equality in 
daily practice, equality of rights and opportuni- 
ties and responsibilities, at all times and under 
all circumstances. We hold that any people who 
would allow themselves to be governed by others 
without protest or who would waive their right 
to a voice in determining the laws under which 
they are to live would be servile and unworthy. 
We are equally justified in holding that workers 
who would be willing to have their terms of em- 
ployment and conditions of labor determined 
wholly by the employers or who would consent 
to work under conditions in the fixing of which 
they were not allowed a voice, would be servile. 
The employer would be a master and the worker 
would not be a free man in the full sense of the 
term. 

The ideals of brotherhood, education, a stand- 
ard of living, and industrial freedom animate 
trade-unionism and it must be apparent that, to 
the degree that these ideals are realized, the 
physical, mental, and moral quality of the masses 
of our people in the industries will be raised. 
These ideals, which steadily have guided labor, 
have shone like a beacon light while labor has 
been tossed by the storms which sweep over our 
industrial seas. They are the ideals which have 
held trade-unionists together during their darkest 



Ideals in Labor 103 

hours. They are the ideals which have Inspired 
men to devote their lives to the trade-union move- 
ment with the same zeal, enthusiasm, devotion, 
and self-sacrifice which marks those who have 
some higher purpose in life than their personal 
comfort and self-interest. 

It is these ideals, animating the army of or- 
ganized labor, which hold out the brightest pros- 
pects for the future of our social structure and 
which give assurance that trade-unionism is a con- 
structive force, accomplishing for labor what no 
other institution has been able to achieve. 



V 

Ideals of Science 



IDEALS OF SCIENCE 

By Professor John Merle Coulter, Head of the Depart- 
ment of Botany, University of Chicago 

IT IS necessary to define the term "science" as 
used in this paper. It has come to mean a 
method rather than a subject, a method which 
may be applied to any subject. There is a science 
of language, of literature, of history, of politics, 
and even of religion, as well as a science of chem- 
istry, physics, geology, biology, etc. In fact, in 
academic circles every subject claims to be scien- 
tific, which means a point of view in reference 
to the materials of a subject. Just as such a claim 
may be, it is clear that in this series of papers, the 
current connotation of the term is intended, 
which restricts it to the so-called "natural 
sciences" that deal with material things. It 
would be unjust to the widening application of the 
scientific method, however, not to call attention 
to this restricted use of the term " science" as em- 
ployed in this paper. 

It should be remarked in the outset that no- 
where in the world are the ideals of science 

107 



io8 Ideals of America 

higher and more nearly on the way to being 
reaHzed than in this country. We are no longer 
the pupils, but the colleagues of our foreign 
brethren. Science, however, knows no national 
boundaries. 

The ideals of science at present are expressing 
themselves in three general ways, each of which 
must receive consideration. They are not mu- 
tually exclusive, but complementary. Opinions 
may differ as to the relative importance of these 
three ideals, but there is probably no difference 
of opinion as to their value. I shall present them 
in what I conceive to be the order of their im- 
portance. 

The first ideal of science is to extend the 
boundaries of hmnan knozvledge. It sets up as 
its goal to understand nature. We speak of 
" conquering nature " and of making her a servant 
to minister to our needs, but this first ideal con- 
tains no such thought. To know nature, simply 
because it is wonderful and worth knowing, is 
what it means. In the presence of this ideal, 
nature may be likened to a great masterpiece, en- 
joyed by those who know how to appreciate what 
it means. To them its market value is no factor 
in their appreciation. To such an investigator, 
nature resembles a huge unexplored continent 
whose secrets are gradually, very gradually, dis- 



Ideals of Science 109 

covered. Something of the enthusiasm of the 
original explorers of our great western territory 
takes possession of him. Every advance into the 
new territory Impresses him with the fact that 
It Is far more extensive than he had dreamed. 
Every trail Is worth following, for It means addi- 
tional knowledge. Some trails may lead to rich 
farm lands and gold mines, but In exploration 
these are only Incidents. To understand the new 
country, all trails must be followed and mapped. 
The figure has suggested the fact that this Ideal 
of science Is the Ideal of the explorer, the Ideal 
which makes all exploration worth while. With- 
out It, this nation would have had the Alleghanles 
for Its western boundary. Without It, nature 
would have remained a region of mystery, pro- 
lific In superstitions. 

This general exploration of the unknown was 
once appreciated more than It Is now. The 
original explorations appealed to the wonder In- 
stinct of a people to whom the new territory was 
a revelation. But after the territory became 
mapped in Its rough outlines, the wonder instinct 
subsided, and people turned their attention to the 
farm lands and the gold mines and came to 
Imagine that exploration stands primarily for 
these things. Recently, however, the tide has 
turned and exploration in science is coming into 
its own again. This is indicated, perhaps most 



no Ideals of America 

significantly, by the change of attitude in the scien- 
tific work of the government. The Bureau of 
Plant Industry, for instance, during the last few 
years, has been adding to its staff scientific ex- 
plorers, so that more and more of its work is 
coming under the category of our first ideal. The 
reason for this has been the realization of the 
fact that practical application is sterile unless 
there is a continuous discovery of something to 
apply. Practice in an old territory is useful, but 
the discovery of new territory that demands new 
practice is far more valuable. If it had not been 
for exploration we should have been farming in 
New England today, instead of in Illinois; and 
if it had not been for scientific exploration our 
practice would have remained that of a century 
ago. This shift in the attitude of a government 
bureau indicates a shift in the attitude, not of the 
representative men engaged in the scientific work 
of the government, but in the attitude of the 
people, who through their representatives permit 
such work. 

This attitude of the government is expressing 
itself also in the developing ideals of agricultural 
experiment stations, which were formerly schools 
for apprentices, but which are now becoming 
rapidly schools of science. It is expressing itself 
also in the endowment of institutions for research, 
such as the Carnegie Institution and the Rocke- 



Ideals of Science m 

feller Institute. Furthermore, the general growth 
of this Ideal is being felt in the universities, those 
notorious hotbeds of pure science, in the increas- 
ing attendance of practical students who have dis- 
covered that they must know science and must be 
able to explore. 

Cooperation in research Is the scientific slogan 
of today, and we are moving rapidly toward the 
time when every man who has the ability to ex- 
plore shall have the opportunity. In other words, 
this country is entering upon its second period of 
exploration; this time not of territory but of 
nature. 

That scientific exploration is entering upon an 
advanced stage of its development is shown by 
the fact that It is proceeding In its method from 
analysis to synthesis. Until recently, progress in 
science was marked by an increasing segregation 
of subjects, so that scientific men were distributed 
into numerous pigeon-holes and labeled. A man 
in one pigeon-hole knew little of the work of his 
colleagues, and cared less. This segregation was 
immensely useful in the development of the tech- 
nique of science, by which results are secured. 
But now we realize the fact that nature is not 
pigeon-holed, but is a great synthesis; and we 
know that to understand nature, which is to syn- 
thesize our results, all of our so-called sciences 
must focus upon the problems. Using my own 



12 Ideals of America 



field of work, botany, as an Illustration, we have 
discovered that to know plants and their relation 
to the synthesis we call nature, we must know not 
only their structure and habits, but also the chem- 
istry of the materials that affect their living, the 
physics of the variable conditions that they must 
face, the geological record of their former his- 
tory. In short, botany has become the focusing 
of all the sciences upon the problems of plants. 
In one sense, scientific exploration is a luxury, 
just as is music or art or literature, and must be 
recognized in the same way as a response to a 
high human impulse, the impulse to know, an im- 
pulse which is developing the human race into 
greater intellectual efficiency. 

A second ideal of science is to apply the results 
of science to human welfare. It sets up as its 
goal the service of man and expresses itself in 
what has been called " applied science," the science 
of our first ideal being distinguished as "pure 
science." It is this expression of science that the 
national government and the state governments 
have been fostering almost exclusively until re- 
cently. As indicated in connection with our first 
ideal, the public has begun to recognize the fact 
that pure and applied science are not mutually ex- 
clusive fields of activity, but complementary, and 
therefore public support for pure science is grow- 



Ideals of Science 113 

ing. Even yet, however, a general appreciation 
of the vital connection between these two ideals 
IS lacking, and a compact statement may be useful. 
It will serve to distinguish the two ideals and at 
the same time to emphasize their interdependence. 

The idea that there are two distinct kinds of 
science, pure and applied, not only exists in the 
public mind, but also is reenforced by published 
statements from colleges and universities. An 
attempt to define these two kinds of science re- 
veals the fact that the distinction Is a general 
Impression rather than a clear statement. If the 
Impression be analyzed, it seems that pure science 
Is of no material service to mankind and that ap- 
plied science has to do w^ith the mechanism of 
our civilization. The distinction, therefore. Is 
based upon material output. In other words, 
pure science only knows things, while applied 
science knows how to do things. This impression, 
rather than distinction, has been unfortunate In 
several ways. The public, as represented by the 
modern American community, believes In doing 
things; and therefore to them pure science seems 
useless and Its devotees appear as ornamental 
rather than as vital members of human society, 
to be admired rather than used. The reaction of 
this sentiment upon opportunities for the cultiva- 
tion of pure science is obvious. 

On the other hand, the universities, as repre- 



114 Ideals of America 



sented by their Investigators, believe In knowing 
things; and therefore to them apphed science 
seems to be a waste of Investigative energy and 
Its devotees appear to be unscientific — very use- 
ful, but not to be acknowledged as belonging to 
the scientific cult, the cult of explorers. The 
reaction of this sentiment sometimes has been to 
avoid the investigation of problems that have 
an obvious practical application and to justify 
Lowell's definition of a university as " a place 
where nothing useful Is taught." 

In recent years, however, a new spirit Is taking 
possession of the public, and it has invaded the 
universities. In fact, so conspicuous have the uni- 
versities become in the movement that they seem 
to be the leaders; certainly they furnish the 
trained leaders. The new spirit that Is beginning 
to dominate increasingly Is the spirit of mutual 
service. It is called by a variety of names, de- 
pendent upon the group that proclaims It; It is 
narrow or broad In its application, dependent 
upon the moral and intellectual equipment of its 
promoters ; but It is the same enduring idea. The 
university Is no longer conceived of as a scholastic 
cloister, a refuge for the Intellectually Impractical, 
but as an organization whose mission is to serve 
society In the largest possible way. Furthermore, 
this service Is conceived of not merely as the In- 
direct contribution of trained minds, but also as 



Ideals of Science ii5 

the direct contribution of assistance in solving the 
problems that confront community life. 

As an Introductory Illustration of the relation 
between pure and applied science, there may be 
outlined the usual steps that science has taken In 
the material service of mankind. An investigator, 
stimulated only by what has been called " the de- 
lirious but divine desire to know," Is attracted by 
a problem. No thought of its usefulness In a 
material way Is In his mind; he wishes simply 
to make a contribution to knowledge. No one 
can appreciate the labor, the patience, the Intel- 
lectual equipment involved in such work unless 
he has undertaken It himself. The Investigator 
succeeds In solving his problem and Is satisfied. 
Later, perhaps many years later, some other 
scientific man discovers that the results of the 
former may be used to revolutionize some process 
of manufacture, some method of transportation 
or communication, some empirical formula of 
agriculture, some practice In medicine or surgery. 
The application Is made and the world applauds; 
but the applause Is chiefly for the second man, 
the one who made the practical application. Any 
analysis of the situation, however, shows that to 
the practical result both men contributed, and In 
that sense both men, the first no less than the 
second, were of Immense material service. The 
ratio that exists between scientific men of the 



ii6 Ideals of 'America 



first type and those of the second is not known, 
but there Is very great disparity. 

Another illustration is needed as a corollary. 
In this case an Investigator, stimulated by the 
desire to serve the community, is attracted by a 
problem. He also wishes to make a contribution 
to knowledge. He succeeds in solving his prob- 
lem, perhaps makes his own application, and is 
satisfied. Later some other scientific man dis- 
covers that the results of the former may be used 
to revolutionize certain fundamental conceptions 
of science. His statement Is made and the scien- 
tific world applauds; and this time also the ap- 
plause is chiefly for the second man, the pure 
scientist. The analysis of this case shows, how- 
ever, that to the scientific result both men con- 
tributed and that both men were of large scientific 
service. 

A third illustration is needed to complete the 
historical picture of progress in scientific knowl- 
edge and in its material applications. A practical 
man, not trained as an Investigator, faces the 
problem of obtaining some new and useful result. 
His only method is to apply empirically certain 
formulae that have been developed by science, 
but with ingenuity and patience he succeeds. Al- 
though he is not able to analyze his results, his 
procedure reveals to a trained investigator data 
that lead to a scientific synthesis of the first order. 



Ideals of Science ii7 

With such Illustrations taken to represent the 
actual historical situation, what may be some of 
the conclusions? It is evident that responsibility 
for the material results of science Is to be shared 
by those engaged in pure science, those engaged 
In applied science, and those not trained In science 
at all. The only distinction Is not In the result, 
therefore, but in the intent. In fact, the difference 
between pure science and applied science in their 
practical aspects resolves itself Into the difference 
between murder and manslaughter; It lies In the 
Intention. So long as the world gets the practical 
results of science, It Is not likely to trouble itself 
about the Intention. In every end result of science 
that reaches the public there Is an Inextricable 
tangle of contributions. Between the source of 
energy and the point of application there may 
be much machinery; perhaps none of It can be 
eliminated from the final estimate of values, and 
yet the public Is In danger of gazing at the prac- 
tical electric light and of forgetting the power- 
house. 

Another conclusion Is that all application must 
have something to apply, and that application only 
would presently result In sterility. There must 
be perennial contributions to knowledge, with or 
without immediately useful Intent, that application 
may possess a wide and fertile field for culti- 
vation. 



ii8 Ideals of America 



A third conclusion is that there is nothing in- 
herent In useful problems that would compel their 
avoidance by an investigator who wishes to con- 
tribute to knowledge. While such an investigator 
should never be handicapped by the utilitarian 
motive, at the same time he should never be per- 
versely nonutllltarlan. There Is no reason why a 
university, for example, especially one dominated 
by research, should not include among its inves- 
tigations some that are of Immediate concern to 
the public welfare. 

A final conclusion may be that all science Is 
one; that pure science is often immensely prac- 
tical; that applied science is often very pure 
science; and that between the two there is no 
dividing line. They are like the end members 
of a long and Intergrading series; very distinct in 
their isolated and extreme expression, but com- 
pletely connected. If distinction must be ex- 
pressed in terms where no sharp distinction exists, 
It may be expressed by the terms fundamental 
and superficial. They are terms of comparison 
and admit of every intergrade. In general, a 
university devoted to research should be interested 
in the fundamental things of science, the larger 
truths, that increase the general perspective of 
knowledge, and may underlie the possibilities of 
material progress in many directions. On the 
other hand, the immediate material needs of the 



Ideals of Science ii9 

community are to be met by the superficial things 
of science, the external touch of more fundamental 
things. The series may move In either direction, 
but Its end members must always hold the same 
relative positions. The first stimulus may be our 
need, and a superficial science meets It, but In so 
doing It may put us on the trail that leads to the 
fundamental things of science. On the, other 
hand, the fundamentals may be gripped first, and 
only later find some superficial expression. The 
series is often attacked first In some intermediate 
region, and probably most of the research In pure 
science may be so placed; that is, It Is relatively 
fundamental, but It is also relatively superficial. 
The real progress of science Is away from the 
superficial, toward the fundamental, and the more 
fundamental are the results, the more extensive 
may be their superficial expression. 

A notable illustration of this connection be- 
tween fundamental science and Its superficial ex- 
pression Is that given by the study of organic 
evolution. Before the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, evolution was a speculation which was as 
old as our record of human thought. During 
the nineteenth century It came to be based upon 
observation, and thus became a science, but Its 
appeal was simply to those who wanted to under- 
stand nature. At the beginning of the present 
century It became a subject for experiment, for 



I20 Ideals of America 

observation had reached Its limit and It was neces- 
sary to know through experiment whether one 
kind of organism can produce another kind. This 
experimental work began to uncover the laws of 
inheritance, or of heredity, as w^e have come to 
call It. The discovery of these laws suggested 
methods of securing practical results In plant- 
breeding never dreamed of before, and a revolu- 
tion In agriculture was the result. It Is a far cry 
from a speculation concerning evolution to a solu- 
tion of the problem of food production, but the 
continuity is unbroken. 

It Is the proper balance between the two ideals 
that must be maintained. The physical needs of 
man, great as they may be, must never obscure 
the Intellectual needs of man; especially as the 
trained Intellect is the speediest agent In meeting 
physical needs. On the other hand, the Intellec- 
tual needs of man, noble as they may be, must 
never lose sight of the fact that the speediest 
results are often obtained by the enormous In- 
crease of experimental work under the pressure 
of physical necessity. 

A third Ideal of science Is to develop a scientific 
attitude of mind. It sets up as Its goal a more 
effective citizen and expresses Itself In the results 
of science In education. The scientific attitude 
of mind is probably nothing more than trained 



Ideals of Science 121 

common sense, but a fuller definition will indicate 
more clearly the significance of this ideal. In the 
first place, it is a spirit of inquiry which recognizes 
that we are surrounded by a vast body of estab- 
lished beliefs that need a thorough going over to 
distinguish heirloom rubbish from the priceless 
results of generations of experience. It is also 
a spirit that demands a close connection between 
a result and its claimed cause. Failure to develop 
this spirit provides the soil In which political 
demagoguery, destructive charlatanism, and re- 
ligious vagaries flourish like noxious weeds. It Is 
a spirit that keeps one close to the facts. 

One of the hardest things in my teaching ex- 
perience has been to check the tendency to use one 
fact as a starting point for a wild flight of fancy. 
Such a tendency is corrected somewhat, of course, 
when facts accumulate, and flight in one direction 
Is checked by a pull in some other direction. Most 
of us, however, have the tendency, and the ma- 
jority are so unhampered by facts that flight is 
free. There seems to be abroad a notion that 
one may start with a single well-attested fact, and 
by some machinery of logic construct an elaborate 
system and reach an authentic conclusion, much 
as the world has imagined for more than a cen- 
tury that Cuvier could do if a single bone were 
furnished him. The result is bad, even though 
the initial fact has an unclouded title, but it too 



122 Ideals of America 



often happens that great superstructures have 
been reared upon a fact that is claimed rather 
than demonstrated. 

Facts are like stepping stones. So long as one 
can get a reasonably close series of them he can 
make some progress in a given direction; but 
when he steps beyond them he flounders. As one 
travels away from a fact its significance in any 
conclusion becomes more and more attenuated, 
until presently the vanishing point is reached, like 
the rays of light from a candle. A fact is really 
influential only in its own immediate vicinity, but 
the whole structure of many a system lies in the 
region beyond the vanishing point. 

Such "vain imaginings" are delightfully seduc- 
tive to many people whose life and conduct are 
even shaped by them. I have been amazed at the 
large development of this phase of emotional in- 
sanity, commonly masquerading under the name 
" subtle thinking." Perhaps the name is expres- 
sive enough if it means thinking without any 
material for thought. An active mind turned in 
upon itself, without any valuable objective ma- 
terial, seems to react upon itself, resulting in a 
sort of mental chaos. 

In short, the scientific spirit is one that makes 
for sanity in thought and action, a spirit which 
is slowly increasing in its influence, but which as 
yet does not control the majority of citizens. Any 



Ideals of Science 123 

subject that can be used to cultivate this spirit 
is of the greatest importance. 

Of course the methods introduced by science 
are now being developed in connection with other 
subjects, and the same result may be obtained 
through them; but it still remains true that the 
scientific spirit just described is more easily and 
effectively developed in contact with the concrete 
materials of science. 

A stronger claim for science, however, can be 
made, In that it gives a training peculiar to Itself, 
and It Is this contribution that expresses the ideal 
I wish to emphasize. I shall assume that any 
peculiar result of science In education must be ob- 
tained, not through information In reference to 
the facts of science, but through contact with the 
materials of science. However valuable informa- 
tion may be, It can hardly be regarded as a sub- 
stitute for knowledge. Information Is always at 
least second hand; while knowledge Is first hand. 
The real educational significance of personal ex- 
perience, which Is a better name for what we call 
the laboratory method. Is very commonly over- 
looked, even by teachers of science. 

We were first told that science teaches the 
laboratory method, the Inference being that the 
content of science Is of no particular educational 
advantage In Itself, but Is merely useful In teach- 
ing a valuable method. Of course this method 



124 Ideals of America 



holds no more relation to science than do algebraic 
symbols to algebra; they both represent merely 
useful machinery for getting at the real results. 

Then we were told that science cultivates the 
power and habit of observation. Of course It 
does, but this Is not peculiar to training In science, 
for It belongs to any subject In which the labora- 
tory method Is used. Then It was claimed that 
the study of science trains the power of analysis. 
This Is certainly getting the subject upon higher 
ground, for the power of analysis Is of Immense 
practical Importance, but to Imagine that analysis 
Is the ultimate purpose of science In education Is 
not to go very much further than to say that 
the ultimate purpose Is the laboratory method. 
The latter Is the method, the former Is but the 
first step In Its application and Is by no means 
peculiar to science. 

Beyond analysis lies synthesis, and this certainly 
represents the ultimate purpose of science. The 
results of our analysis are as barren as a bank of 
sand until synthesis lays hold of them; but even 
synthesis Is not peculiar to science. To pass by 
the Incidental and the temporary and to reach the 
real and permanent contribution of science to 
education Is to discover that It lies, not In teaching 
the laboratory method, In developing the power 
of observation. In cultivating the spirit of analysis, 
or even In carrying one to the heights of syn- 



Ideals of Science 125 

thesis, but in the mental attitude demanded in 
reaching the synthesis. In this regard, the de- 
mands of science are diametrically opposed to 
those of the humanities, for example, using this 
term to express the great region of literature and 
Its allies. The general effect of the humanities 
In the scheme of education may be summed up in 
the single word appreciation. They seek to relate 
the student to what has been said or done by man- 
kind, that his critical sense may be developed and 
that he may recognize what Is best In human 
thought and action. To recognize what is best 
involves a standard of comparison. In most cases 
this standard is derived and conventional; In rare 
cases it is original and individual; in no case Is it 
founded on the essential nature of things, In abso- 
lute truth, for It Is likely to shift. It is the artistic, 
the esthetic which predominates, not the absolute. 
The whole process is one of self-injection In order 
to reach the power of appreciation. If the proper 
result of the humanities Is appreciation, whose 
processes demand self-injection, the proper and 
distinctive result of science is a formida, to obtain 
which there must be rigid self-elimination. Any 
Injection of self Into a scientific synthesis vitiates 
the result. The standard Is not a variable and 
artificial one, developed from the varying tastes 
of men; It Is an absolute standard founded upon 
eternal truth. 



126 Ideals of America 



Two such distinct mental attitudes as self-injec- 
tion and self-elimination are not contradictory, 
but complementary. The exclusive development 
of either one must result in a lopsided develop- 
ment. Persistent self-injection tends to mysticism, 
a confusion of ideals, or even vagaries, with reali- 
ties, a prolific source of all irrational beliefs. 
Persistent self-elimination narrows the vision to 
a horizon touched by the senses, and clips the 
wings that would carry us now and then beyond 
the treadmill of life into a freer air and a wider 
outlook. The two processes and the two results 
are so distinct and so complementary that any 
scheme of education which does not provide for 
the definite cultivation of both of these attitudes 
is in constant danger of resulting in mental dis- 
tortion. 

You have now the reason for the statement 
that the scientific attitude of mind is trained com- 
mon sense, and also for the claim that this ideal 
of science is related to the better equipment of 
the race for meeting its increasingly complex 
problems. 

To summarize the whole situation: the ideals 
of science are: (i) to understand nature, that 
the boundaries of human knowledge may be ex- 
tended, and man may live in an ever-widening 
perspective; (2) to apply this knowledge to the 



Ideals of Science 127 | 



service of man, that his life may be fuller of 
opportunity; and (3) to use the method of science 
in training man, so that he may solve his problems 
and not be their victim. 



VI 

Ideals in Education 



VI 
IDEALS IN EDUCATION 

By Ernest Carroll Moore, Professor of Education^ 
Harvard University 

IN THESE distressful days when each one of 
us at times feels that the way of life which 
w^e call civilized may be lost and forgotten it is 
imperative that we take stock of the forces which 
we can employ to perpetuate it among men. 
Surely the name for our age is that which Fichte 
gave to his, "the age of completed sinfulness." 
Such horrors as are now known, such suffering 
as is now felt, the race has never known before. 
Indeed if all the other wars, pestilences, famines, 
cataclysms and devastations which have afflicted 
mankind since the beginning of recorded time 
were added together into one great horror, it is 
a question whether their sum total would equal 
this single one which goes on now. Have they 
who did this thing no pity, no bowels of com- 
passion, no care for the one little life which is all 
we have, that they make nothing of It and crush 
it out so ruthlessly? Surely colossal madness has 
done this thing, for sanity could not even imagine 

131 



132 Ideals of America 

it. But no, It is all due to ideals, all the result of 
teaching. 

Yet there is another side to the picture. It has 
been met by something stronger than it is. Never 
before since history began has the irresistible and 
triumphant power of an idea so manifested itself 
as now. Thought is again made flesh and dwells 
among us and we who are so fortunate as to be 
alive now behold its power. Such devotion to 
the old fidelities, such eagerness to serve, such 
patience under suffering, such a sublime surrender 
of goods, of cherished plans, of friends, of self 
itself, that an idea may live, that an ideal may 
triumph, as takes place at every instant of time 
in Europe, this world has never seen before. We 
may indeed say to each other what Aeschines said 
to his fellows who were alive in the day of Alex- 
ander, and we may say it to each other with 
better right than he said it: "We live not the 
life of mortals, but are born at such a moment 
of time that posterity will relate our prodigies." 

When the Homer shall arise to tell of these 
great deeds as half-forgotten things, he will not 
sing of wrath or power of armaments or over- 
confident, long-labored efficiency. He will sing 
of ideals, of human hatred of wrong, of s-acrifice 
for social laws, of irresistible love of liberty. 
These are invisible things, but they are stronger 
than visible things and determine them. Ideals 



Ideals in Education i33 

are always that, they are personal; they exist 
nowhere but in minds; they do not float in the air 
or belong to things. They always belong to folks. 
They are the thoughts, the hopes, the plans, the 
resolutions of people. They are not fancies or 
opinions, but purposes, principles, resolves. The 
ideals of this nation are the thoughts of what 
this nation is going to do, has got to do, that you 
and I and the rest of folks in it have; and the 
ideals of education in this country are the thoughts 
of what education is for, and must do, that you 
and I and the rest of folks in our land have. 

I have sometimes fancied a visitor coming to 
Harvard University and asking to be shown the 
real university. One of the guides might take 
him into the Yard and point out the buildings 
to him and say: These are the real university; or 
another guide might produce for him a list of the 
endowment funds and say: This is the real uni- 
versity; or another one might show him a book 
which contains the history of the university — 
Harvard guides are, I regret to say, rather too 
prone to do that. He might take him to Mt. 
Auburn and show him certain rather numerous 
plain and simple graves there, and say: This Is 
the real university; or might show him the roll of 
the alumni, or the assembled student body, or the 
faculty gathered in faculty meeting, or the labora- 
tories, and the library; and I have imagined the 



134 Ideals of America 

visitor turning away in each case and asking: 
What brings all these together here? What is 
the purpose that built these buildings, that brought 
this money, that constituted this history, that as- 
sembled these professors both living and dead, 
that collects these students? Show me that, for 
that shapes all the rest, that Is the real university. 
Or, I have imagined that same discerning visitor 
coming from Europe and asking to be shown the 
real United States, and when pointed to the land 
bounded on the east by the Atlantic, on the south 
by Mexico, on the west by the Pacific and on the 
north by Canada, saying that was all here before 
Columbus came, yet he did not find any United 
States here. That is the territory of the United 
States. Show me the real United States. And 
next he would, perhaps, be directed to go to 
Washington and look at the White House and the 
Supreme Court and the assembled Congress, but 
would at once say: No, that is the government of 
the United States. Look then at all these one 
hundred million people, he would be told. But 
no, they are the people of the United States. I 
want to see what makes these states and what 
unites them. And Socrates-like he would then go 
about from this man to that saying to each of 
them, "Speak that I may see thee," .and from 
what he found that they desired with all their 
hearts, souls, minds, and strength he would decide 



Ideals in Education i35 

whether there is Indeed any real United States. 
Ideals are our very life blood; they pay our debts; 
they send us to our work in the morning; they 
keep us from taking our neighbors' property, from 
turning destroyer and pillaging, burning, and 
trampling out lives. 

You are that discerning visitor. You ask me 
to show you the real education of our country. 
You do not want to be shown the buildings, or 
the funds or the teachers or the textbooks or the 
students. This is to be no tabulation of plant, 
equipment, resources, personnel or results, no 
journey through a museum to look at specimens. 
It is the animating purpose of this great enterprise 
that you wish me to consider and I most gladly 
comply, but with a reservation. France is a real 
thing; you cannot touch it or see it or hear it; 
it is a mental thing, a desire, a thought, a de- 
termination that men by thousands set aside life 
for nowadays. Suppose you were to go among 
the soldiers who were at Verdun and among the 
women that worked and prayed for them at home 
and ask the question of each one of them : What is 
France? You would get strangely different an- 
swers. I, too, am a private, or at most a drill 
sergeant in a vast army. I cannot speak with 
certainty for the others. I can tell you only what 
education is to me and what I believe it is to 
them. 



136 Ideals of America 



Education Itself Is an ideal. When our an- 
cestors were still " extreme gross," to use a phrase 
from Francis Bacon, they took no thought for it. 
Indeed we can imagine a world in which grown 
folks in cataclysmal selfishness practised destroy- 
ing all their young as soon as they were born. 
Our race has, you know, at various times and In 
different ways destroyed a good many of them. 
A race which followed that practise would soon 
die out. But why not? If we were In fact as 
completely selfish as many of our makers of 
opinion give us credit for being, wx would not 
and could not care. But we do care. We want 
them to live. All education Is rooted In that un- 
selfishness, Is grounded in that ideal. It Is that 
something In us which makes us child-keepers, that 
makes schools and teachers and meetings like this, 
and child-labor laws, and horrible revulsion when 
young lives are wantonly trampled out. 

Again we can imagine a society in which every 
parent took the greatest pains to teach his child 
to lie, and to teach him to steal and to teach him 
to kill, and to do no work for himself but to force 
others to do everything for him, to be a destroyer, 
to delight In anger, to value brawling, to Indulge 
every passion as his right, to disobey all laws, to 
turn a deaf ear to all pleadings, to look upon 
compassion as cowardice, and not to fear death 
but to look forward to endless aeons of joy In 



Ideals in Education i37 

another world provided only that he took the pre- 
caution to die fighting. Such a training would 
bring up children to rend their parents and de- 
stroy each other. The result would be exactly 
the same as if the parents destroyed all the chil- 
dren at birth, only it would be longer in coming. 
There would not be the slightest difference in 
the long run between this method of bringing up 
children and destroying them outright. But just 
this kind of education has been solicitously incul- 
cated in various places and at various times in the 
world's history. Why is it not given now? It is, 
not all of it, but part of it, in every country. Why 
do you object to it? Because it threatens us, be- 
cause it destroys lives. The education which we 
seek must not be of that kind. It must have just 
one object, to serve life, and one justification, 
that It serves It. By life we do not mean mere 
existence but a certain kind of existence. Our 
want of It is more real than anything else we 
know. For the sake of it men suffer wounds, are 
torn asunder, are impaled, yet count imprison- 
ment, loss of possessions and agonizing death as 
little things beside the loss of their conviction that 
the good of men must be served. For the edu- 
cator that alone Is the real thing. And the only 
reason we have such a thing as education at all 
is because of the value we put upon human lives. 
We talk much about our Institutions of learning. 



138 Ideals of America 

about the subjects which we teach In them and 
about our devotion to the sciences. That Is not 
what most of us mean at all. We use such phrases 
as "you must get knowledge for the sake of 
knowledge," "you must pursue science for the 
sake of science," but they are for most of us only 
a circumlocution. What we are really concerned 
for Is the good of folks. In the service of educa- 
tion It Is much easier to assign reasons which will 
satisfy our fellows and quiet objections than rea- 
sons which will do the business and produce the 
fruit of helping men to new and better experi- 
ences. What we are concerned with is knowl- 
edge as a means, not an end. 

Some time ago Professor Dewey told me that 
when he began to write his last book on the 
philosophy of education he made what was to him 
the startling discovery that all philosophy is 
philosophy of education. For, what other reason 
can there be for striving to have folks learn 
philosophy than that they may learn to think 
about life sanely? Is not the same thing true of 
all literature, all art, all science, all Industry, all 
government, all religion, all morals? Have we 
any reason for caring for them save that our 
efforts in them conserve and augment human 
forces and make life a better thing? Has In- 
dustry any other warrant than the production of 
goods for human use? Has science any other 



Ideals in Education i39 

motive than that Indicated by its motto, '' I 
serve?" Has religion any other purpose than to 
inculcate helpful lessons about God and the life 
of our own souls? Has government any other 
reason for existing than to devise and secure the 
welfare of folks? All these exist to teach men 
to be free. I am therefore going to be more de- 
manding than Professor Dewey was. I am going 
to say that all literature, all art, all science, all 
government, all religion is for education, that they 
have no other reason for existence than to teach 
folks to live well. We who teach are fabricating 
the future. We must build it out of all the dis- 
coveries concerning the life of man that man has 
made. 

But I must not, without stating the other one, 
allow you to commit yourselves to the view that 
all knowledge is nothing but a series of discoveries 
which men have made as to the best ways to think 
and act in order to live well here upon this planet; 
that it has all grown out of the race's experiment- 
ing with life, that every single one of its formula- 
tions is only a body of recipes or guideboard 
directions advising us what to do or which road 
to take when certain conditions are met, and that 
every book Is a guidebook to a country that the 
mind of the reader is likely to visit. This Is the 
pragmatic view of the nature and function of 
knowledge, the only view which, as I believe, 



I40 Ideals of America 

makes education either worth while or possible. 
For If all philosophy Is philosophy of education, 
all education is an outcome or effect of philosophy 
and this philosophy of consequences is the only 
one which provides the parent and the teacher 
with a working definition of knowledge, which will 
tell him how to distinguish unerringly what les- 
sons the child must learn from the Infinite mass of 
pseudo-lessons which he might spend his time 
upon and be none the better or wiser for having 
done so. Let me give you some Illustrations of 
just this need for distinguishing knowledge from 
facts, for selecting the matter which children 
should be taught from that which they should not 
be taught. This selection must be made in every 
subject and the principle or ideal of utility is the 
only principle which helps us to make it. 

All children who go to school in our country 
must be taught to spell. But there are four 
hundred thousand words, more or less, in our 
language. Shall they be taught to spell all of 
them or only a part of them and if only a part, 
which part? What does a knowledge of spelling 
mean? What does the teaching of spelling re- 
quire the teacher to do? There are two views: 
According to one, spelling is spelling, and to be 
a good speller means to be able to spell every 
word, or since that is absurd, almost every word 
and at least most of the hard words in the 



Ideals in Education 141 

language. Those who take this position say that 
spelling is for the sake of spelling, the more of it 
one learns the better. The other view is that 
spelling is a very practical matter, we must all 
take pains to spell the words that we write. Each 
one of us has at least four vocabularies and of 
these our writing vocabulary is by far the smallest. 
The words which folks are likely to use in letters 
after they leave school, we should take particular 
pains to teach each child to spell while he is in 
school. That number of words careful tests have 
shown to be more than about two thousand, while 
the number of words which everybody uses is 
hardly more than five hundred. Now if we 
should follow the Cleveland plan of putting but 
two new words into each spelling lesson together 
with eight old ones, since there are more than 
one hundred and fifty days in each school year, we 
could perhaps in four years teach children to spell 
all the words which they are likely to have occa- 
sion to write, and to spell them correctly. As 
soon as w^e take the position that spelling is not 
for spelling but for use we can teach It success- 
fully. As long as we cling to the view that 
spelling Is for spelling we are so confused and 
uncertain that we get nowhere and no one is 
pleased with our attempts, ourselves and the chil- 
dren least of all. That we are not pleased may 
make but little difference, but that the children 



142 Ideals of America 

should because of our misguided efforts learn to 
hate learning is a tragedy more terrible and dev- 
astating even than the World War. 

An examination in geography was given in 
Boston a little while ago to 593 eighth grade 
students, 165 third year high school students and 
87 normal school students. The list which was 
submitted to them was carefully prepared and 
included such questions on the geography of the 
United States as: Locate New York City on 
the map. Locate San Francisco on the map. 
Why do the states just east of the Rocky Moun- 
tains receive less rain than Massachusetts? Ex- 
plain the way in which the flood plains of the 
Mississippi River have been formed. Why are 
these flood plains good for agriculture? And on 
the geography of Europe such questions as: 
Locate on the map two seaports of European 
Russia. Why does England Import large quan- 
tities of wheat? Why has Germany become very 
important as a manufacturing country? Out of 
the 845 pupils tested on the geography of Europe 
not a single pupil passed. In the test on the 
United States 8.7 per cent of the elementary 
school pupils, 4.8 per cent of the high school 
students and i.i per cent or one of the normal 
school pupils passed. Your conclusion Is, doubt- 
less, that they were either pretty poor students or 
that their teaching had been poor. That is not my 



Ideals in 'Education i43 

conclusion. A few days after this test had been 
given I was present at a meeting where these 
results were discussed. Everyone had practically 
reached the conclusion which you just now 
reached, when one of the men present asked, 
" How many facts would you say are brought to 
the attention of a public school child in his study 
of geography each year? As many as ten 
thousand?" "Yes," was the reply, "fully as 
many as ten thousand." When we study geog- 
raphy for facts you see we do not learn geography. 
The view that we study spelling for the sake of 
spelling, geography for the sake of geography, 
science for the sake of science, and knowledge of 
all kinds for the sake of knowledge, is due to the 
anti-pragmatic philosophy known as Intellec- 
tualism. It says that the highest function of our 
minds is to know in order to know — that a sub- 
ordinate function of them is to know in order to 
do. That knowledge in its truest form is knowl- 
edge wholly unmixed with volition or knowledge 
that, as somebody has said, thank God, nobody 
can possibly do anything with. " God hath 
framed the mind of man as a glass capable of the 

image of the universal world For 

knowledge is a double of that which Is," said 
Bacon. According to the pragmatlsts he has done 
nothing of the sort, and we would be enormously 
handicapped and wholly helpless If he had. The 



144 Ideals of America 

fact that it is impossible for us to attend, with the 
same intensity, to everything which goes on indi- 
cates that the mind is not a mirror to reflect im- 
ages of everything which is, but a selecting device 
which works by picking out that which is worth 
while from that which is not worth while. This 
philosophy then commands educators to abandon 
their attempts to treat all that is known as 
equally valuable, and to impart universal knowl- 
edge to the young. It says that knowledge for 
the sake of knowledge, science for the sake of 
science, or art for art's sake, are monstrous shib- 
boleths, that only confusion, misdirected effort, 
and a wretched wasting of life result from them, 
that knowledge, science, and art are all for man's 
sake, are tools, and must never be hypostatized 
into self-existent realities. 

So much for ideals about what we should 
teach. Next comes the question, what result 
should we seek when we teach it. What does 
teaching these various lessons that the race has 
learned, and values, do for the learner? Or, in 
other words, what Is education? Here so many 
ideals are held by teachers that I cannot examine 
them all. I will select three for your considera- 
tion. The first is that education imparts knowl- 
edge — that teachers have it and students do not 
have it and students go to school that teachers or 
textbooks or both together may pass it over, hand 



Ideals in Education i45 

it out, impart it, or deliver it to them. Many 
people think schools are knowledge-shops, where 
pounds, ounces, pennyweights of knowledge are 
transferred to the young. They do this perhaps 
because they see teachers constantly engaged in 
testing their students to find out how much of 
what has been delivered to them they retain and 
can hand back again. But if you will stop for a 
moment and consider what sort of a thing knowl- 
edge is, you will see that no teacher can hand 
over or share his knowledge with his pupil any 
more than he can hand over or share his head- 
ache or his toothache with him. My knowledge 
is the body of sensations, perceptions, memories, 
images, thoughts, feelings, and volitions that I 
am aware of, somewhat reduced to order, classi- 
fied and arranged so that when something hap- 
pens that calls for a reaction from me I am able 
to make that reaction and do what should be done 
next. If you speak to me in English I can answer 
you in English for I have a knowledge of English 
words, but if you speak to me in Italian I cannot 
answer you in Italian for I have no knowledge of 
that language. If you ask me what two and 
seven and nine make I can tell you, but if you 
put me into the midst of a battle and ask me 
what to do next, I cannot tell you, nor can I do 
It if you give the commands for I have not learned 
how to work by that action-system. We go to 



146 Ideals of America 

school to learn to use our own minds in the sev- 
eral most Important ways in which the race has 
found it necessary to use minds, to learn to work 
by the action-systems that the race has learned 
to prefer. It is always our own thoughts that 
we learn to work with. If the teacher tells me 
that three and five make eight, I must think three 
and then five and I must combine them. If 
she says that Christopher Columbus discovered 
America in 1492, I must form a notion of what 
is meant by Christopher Columbus, by discovered, 
and by America, and I must work out or make 
my own notion of what 1492 means. The teacher 
does not give me her thoughts. She cannot. No- 
body can. All she can do is to put me into a 
condition in which I must generate and make use 
of my own. 

The mistaken notion that education is the im- 
parting of knowledge, the delivering or confer- 
ring or handing out of knowledge, with all the 
confusion and waste that follows from it in 
schools, is due to certain foolish statements which 
we allow ourselves to make concerning language. 
We say that It imparts thought or vehicles 
thought or expresses thought or conveys thought. 
It does nothing of the sort. Thoughts cannot be 
sent from one person to another. They never 
pass through the air. They do not ride on words 
or leave us when we move our lips and disturb 



Ideals in 'Education i47 

the air about us in such a way that that disturb- 
ance reaches the tympanum of an auditor. If I 
speak to you, you feel a sound, but you make your 
own meaning to fit that sound. If the sound Is 
of a language strange to you, you say you cannot 
make out what I mean. Language Is only a sys- 
tem of signals^ When I can make them out, I 
can understand what you mean, but the thought 
which I make to fit your sounds, your words. Is 
my own thought, not yours. In place of saying 
that language imparts thought or conveys thought, 
we should say that language demands thought, or 
requires thought or necessitates thought or arouses 
thought or provokes it. The teacher Is a provoker 
of thought, not one who purveys or supplies It, 
and the thought and knowledge which the student 
makes are his own. Education then simply puts 
him into conditions in which he, using what men 
have said and done in past time and what men 
say and do now as raw material for his own con- 
structing, makes up his own mind about the mat- 
ter and so builds up his own knowledge. 

The other mistaken Ideal of education to which 
a great many teachers devote themselves and 
their students, as I believe altogether In vain, is 
not concerned with the imparting of knowledge 
but with the creating of mind. Those who fol- 
low this ideal seem to say that our minds are very 
Imperfect things at birth, that they must be made 



148 Ideals of America 

over, improved, renovated, disciplined, sharp- 
ened, drawn out, made supple, developed, and 
perfected. Do you remember the story of the 
man who went about the streets of an ancient city 
crying " new lamps for old." You say there never 
was such a man. Do not be too sure about it. 
The professors who hold this view go about cry- 
ing: New minds for old, new minds for old. They 
say that certain studies are valuable, not because 
we cannot possibly get along without knowing 
their content, but because they form a sort of 
grindstone on which we must sharpen our intel- 
lects. I believe that this doctrine is a superstition 
and a baneful one, and that no other educational 
ideal begins to take such a toll of young lives as 
this one does. It is an idol which is worshiped 
chiefly in our colleges, but they make both en- 
forced and voluntary converts to it in the high 
schools and voluntary converts to it in the elemen- 
tary schools of our country. Ask the teacher of 
spelling or arithmetic or geography why he be- 
lieves in spelling for the sake of spelling, or arith- 
metic which no one outside of school uses, or 
geography which one will never again refer to In 
life, or grammar the use of which no student 
understands, and he will tell you that it is because 
these lessons are good for the mind, they 
strengthen it, make it facile, increase its power, 
and sharpen the wits of the young. But no 



Ideals in Education i49 

teacher ever has to get Inside the mind or do any 
burnishing or repair work there, no teacher ever 
has to add any cubits to Its stature or build any 
additions to it. That simply cannot be done. *' I 
have hardly ever known a mathematician who 
could reason," says Plato. '' Learning Greek 
teaches Greek, and nothing else; certainly not 
common sense. If that have failed to precede the 
teaching," said Browning. In the Harvard Club 
in Boston there Is a room set apart for the use of 
the graduates of the Medical School and over the 
fireplace In that room Is an Inscription, a motto 
which states In a sentence the Ideal, the philosophy 
of the medical profession. It Is this: "We dress 
the wound, God heals It." Now if we were to 
try to make a sound ideal for the teaching pro- 
fession, a philosophy which we could all unite in 
following, what form should It take? This I 
think: ''We train people to use their minds; God 
makes them." That training Is always specific, 
never general. It Is always learning to do this, 
that, or the other particular thing, never learning 
to act in general. 

What specific things shall we train them to do? 
You see, just as soon as you give up Intellec- 
tuallsm with Its mirror-up-to-nature Ideal and Its 
knowledge-for-the-sake-of-knowledge slogan, you 
must take the position that knowledge Is not a 
luxury, but an Indispensable human necessity. It 



I50 Ideals of America 

is not having it that makes it valuable, It Is doing 
by its aid or with it. Knowledge therefore be- 
comes different from fact; it is what we do about 
facts; it is learning to work with facts, making 
them come our way or getting ready for them by 
foreseeing them. That is, knowledge, real knowl- 
edge, is always a kind of skill. The person who 
has it Is different from other folks In what he can 
do. To know French means to speak, write, and 
read French; to know ethics means to be con- 
strained to ethical thought and action; to know 
science means to maintain the suspended judg- 
ment rather than the snap judgment, to collect 
the necessary information and try out our mental 
conclusions before we assert them or act upon 
them. Though studies have curiously different 
kinds of names, some of them names ending In 
ing and other names ending in ic, y, or ry, this is 
due to some false notions on the part of the men 
who named them. They are all really ing studies 
and serve no other purpose than to train us to use 
our own minds upon the matters of which they 
treat in the ways that the race has thus far found 
It most useful to work In Its struggles to master 
these matters. According to this Ideal every 
child goes to school for exactly the same reason 
that an apprentice goes to a blacksmith shop, 
I. e., to learn to work with or operate or use cer- 
tain highly important social tools which the race 



Ideals in 'Education 151 

has wrought out with which to perform its work. 
Every society teaches its children to think about 
the things which It cares for, to do the things 
which It values. The school Is simply society's 
most conscious effort to keep itself alive and to 
renew Itself. It cannot be the same In the differ- 
ent countries, for It is the chosen agency for real- 
izing the national Ideal. When Socrates was In 
prison awaiting execution his friend Crito came 
to him and said: "I have arranged everything. 
The prison doors are open. You can escape and 
cross the frontier of Attica to safety if you will." 
But, said Socrates, nothing Is worth doing 
that must not first be thought about. Let us 
think about this. Injustice and death are of slight 
concern to a man who Is Innocent, but doing in- 
jury to his own soul Is of great concern. And 
then, as you will recall, he Imagines the personi- 
fied Laws of Athens coming to him and asking 
him If he can be planning to destroy them. They 
say to him: 

Did we not bring you into existence? Was it not by 
our authority that your father married your mother and 
begat you? Are not those of us reasonable which com- 
manded your father to train you in music and gymnastic ? 
.... No one of us has hindered you or any other 
citizen after he comes of age and has examined our man- 
agement of the city and finds that it does not please him 
from taking all that belongs to him and going wherever 
he pleases But whoever among you who after 



152 Ideals of America 

examining and seeing how we give judgment and man- 
age the other affairs of the city, chooses to remain, pledges 
himself in verj^ deed to abide by us and perform what- 
soever we command. 

Sir Henry Jones says : 

The greatest discovery ever made by man was made by 
the Greeks when, cutting themselves free from the tra- 
ditions of the ancient world, they alighted upon the con- 
ception of a civil state where citizens should be free. The 
most momentous experiment of mankind is that of carry- 
ing out their conception to its ultimate consequences in a 
true democracy. 

That most momentous experiment we are car- 
rying out. The means which the Athenians, 
though not of our blood our true ancestors, chose 
are the means which we choose. Our laws com- 
pel the parent to have his child trained In the 
elements of education. In this we try to carry 
on the early Athenian practice, to put into effect 
the advice of Plato and of Aristotle and to realize 
the effort which Charles the Great and Alfred the 
Great, with unerring vision of what Is necessary 
to a state, made In vain. The child does not 
belong to his parents, but to the state, to organized 
society as a whole. The parents have duties to 
him but no property In him. He must, whether 
his parents are willing or are not willing, spend 
his earlier years as an apprentice to certain social 
activities which he will have to continue to per- 



Ideals in Education i53 

form as long as he lives. He must be taught to 
read and write and use the language of our 
country and to work with the aid of numbers. 
He must build up his own notions of the world, 
become familiar with the songs and stories of his 
race, and come to a realizing sense of what sort of 
an undertaking he has inherited and what has 
already been attempted and accomplished in it 
before he came. 

These things have become so much a matter 
of second nature to us that their real meaning is 
overlooked. Is it of overwhelming importance 
to the people of the United States that every child 
shall learn to read? Well, let us see. Many 
things are happening in this world and in the 
lurid light reflected from other lands we are able 
more clearly to discern the features of our own 
life. In the United States 96 per cent of the 
people can read, in Mexico 80 per cent of the 
people cannot. Because of that, and because of 
that only, certain things happen in Mexico which 
could not possibly happen in the United States. 
One of them Is that spoken words have an undue 
power there. If an orator stands on a street 
corner In Mexico and makes a fiery speech to 
the people telling them that their liberties are 
being stolen from them, that they must arm them- 
selves and march against the tyrant and destroy 
him, the chances are perhaps about ninety to ten 



154 Ideals of America 

that a number of them will rush to arms at once 
and a new revolution will be on. Why? Be- 
cause not having the means to be critical, little 
arises In their minds to challenge and dispute that 
which they hear so convincingly uttered. Not 
being able to read they are the unwilling dupes 
of unprincipled adventurers who trade upon their 
eager creduHty and buy and sell them to suit a 
private advantage. Surely the ability to read the 
yellowest journal In existence would make one 
more self-protective than that. Education exists 
to make men free, and teaching folks to read arms 
them with a means of self-protection by which 
they can checkmate the schemes of Impostors. 
With a free press It makes public opinion pos- 
sible. Teaching folks to write Is not so clearly 
Indispensable, but It does enable us to talk to 
our friends who are beyond the reach of our 
voices. It provides a nearly Indestructible memory 
and is a requisite In many callings. Teaching 
them to number gives a sense of security against 
being cheated In the simple reckonings of life 
and enables us to understand the social arrange- 
ments of time and space. 

These are the three Rs. The cry perpetually 
goes up In this land, now from this critic of the 
public schools, now from that, that they consti- 
tute the whole duty of elementary education, that 
whatsoever Is more than these cometh of faddism 



Ideals in Education i55 

and should be driven out. Is this sound? Let 
us go back to Mexico again. John Stuart Mill 
used to say that social and political theories can- 
not be tested in a laboratory, they do not lend 
themselves to experimental control. Yet political 
theories do display themselves upon a great stage, 
and if we will but take note of what Is happening 
all about us, we shall find that it corrects our own 
theories and tells us much about our problems. 
Even the person among us who Is least Informed 
about Mexico must have concluded from what 
he has read that at least one trouble with that 
unhappy country Is lack of education. " Schools 
for the people " Is a cry of the revolutionists, and 
despite the fact that they claim to have created 
fewer schools than they destroyed and that these 
schools lead but a precarious and fitful existence, 
the problem of Mexico no matter what else hap- 
pens, whether home recovery or Intervention, 
must be solved by her schools. What do we mean 
when we say that? What is the problem of 
Mexico? It Is an Indian country. Of Its sixteen 
million people 38 per cent are pure-blooded In- 
dians, 43 are mixed, and but 19 per cent are 
whites. When Cortes came there In 15 19 he 
found the Indians living In tribes throughout the 
land and having few relations with their fellows 
of other tribes, save to make nearly Incessant war 
upon them. Talleyrand said a hundred years ago 



156 Ideals of America 

that war Is the national industry of Prussia. Well, 
war was the national industry of Mexico. When 
the Spaniards came they did not fuse the Indians 
into one people. They were not one people them- 
selves. Even to this day the king of Spain is 
not crowned king of Spain, but king of the Spains. 
Catalonia, Castile, Aragon, Granada and all the 
other Spains sent their contingents to Mexico. 
They grouped themselves together, the men of 
each of the Spains by themselves in different parts 
of the country; they maintained their own customs 
and their differences, and thus upon the antago- 
nisms and repellencies of the ever-warring native 
tribes were superimposed the antagonism and 
repellencies of mutually jealous conquerors who 
had never been one people. These differences did 
not heal themselves; they multiplied. The ills of 
Mexico are due to lack of unity. "The trouble 
with us," says one distinguished Mexican, "Is 
that we cannot trust each other." The problem of 
Mexico is to create unity, to bring it to pass that 
her people shall learn to value the same things, 
to desire the same things, to hope for the same 
things, to strive for the same things; that is the 
problem of Europe also, and that is the problem 
of the United States. 

Each one of us is born a being separate from 
his fellows and from the surrounding things of 
nature. We must make two conquests and keep 



Ideals in Education i57 

making them as long as we live. One of these Is 
the conquest of nature, the other Is the conquest 
of social relations. The conquest of nature is 
relatively easy, but the conquest of social rela- 
tions Is so difficult that as yet but a mere begin- 
ning has been made in It. The earth produces 
food enough and to spare for all of us, but at 
this moment hundreds of thousands starve and 
millions go to death in paroxysms of unspeakable 
anguish. There Is but one way out of It. It Is 
the final word of religion, philosophy, literature, 
political theory, and morals. It is the problem 
of education; men, all men, must learn that they 
are brothers. 

How can we be brought to value the same 
things, to desire the same things, to hope for the 
same things and to strive for the same things? 
The problem of Mexico cannot be solved by 
opening schools throughout the Republic and 
teaching every Mexican boy and girl merely to 
read, write, and cipher, in them. Many of the 
most frantic destroyers of lives there have had 
that training. Teaching them to read may de- 
crease their over-susceptibility to deception, but 
no amount of zeal In Instructing them In the three 
Rs only or of instructing our people In them will 
convert them into one people, with a common con- 
sciousness, striving for a common Ideal and help- 
ing each other to realize it. The state, said 



158 Ideals of America 



Aristotle, Is a mutual undertaking of friends. It 
does not exist for the sake of alliance and security 
from Injustice nor yet for exchange and mutual 
intercourse, but for the good life. Animals and 
slaves cannot form It for they have no share In 
happiness or In a life of free choice. Christianity 
enlarged this Greek lesson to Include the entire 
family of mankind. God Is the Father of all; 
all are his children; life Is the mutual effort of 
common humanity to assist each other, to value 
the same things, to desire the same things, to hope 
and work for the same things. Only as the state 
enables Its citizens to do this can It be a state and 
only as the people of a nation assist the peoples of 
other nations to do this can it be a nation. 

Unity of desire, unity of plan and aspiration, 
unity of resolution and of action, the lesson of 
unity must be taught In the schools of Mexico, 
and in the schools of England, France, Germany, 
and the United States, and It must be the chief les- 
son which is taught there. In the light of this 
principle we see what the real studies are. They 
are not reading, writing, and arithmetic; they are 
not the sciences or mathematics, valuable as these 
all are. They are not the languages studied 
merely for their disciplinary effect. They are 
those studies that take us up, as It were, on a 
high mountain and show us the kingdoms of this 
world, and the great pulsing vivid panorama of 



Ideals in Education i59 

human effort and striving that goes on In them. 
The mission of these studies Is to make us ever 
mindful of what In Its long struggle mankind has 
attempted, hoped for, and done, that — In that 
most moving phrase from the trenches — we may 
*' carry on." I have often thought and often said 
if I were compelled to choose from among all the 
studies we teach one and only one for my child 
to learn I'd rather have him learn the songs of 
our country than any other thing; for there are 
certain sentiments too precious and too dear to 
be entrusted to the every-day forms of communi- 
cation or even to be entrusted to that extraordi- 
nary form which we call poetry. We give those 
sentiments a more compelling power over us. We 
sing them and thus secure for them the peculiar 
privilege of saying themselves over and over 
again In our hearts. I'd choose these songs first, 
and after them poetry, stories, history, geog- 
raphy, ethics. In later years philosophy, litera- 
ture, and science would assert their claims. Dis- 
ciplinary studies would be banished. Physical 
training would call for more attention even than 
It got in Greece. Each child would be taught the 
elements of a trade. No child would be taught 
anything that he could ever as long as he lived 
feel that he was through with. Efficiency would 
be the object, but not that lop-sided and deformed 
efficiency that comes from the ability to control 



i6o Ideals of America 



things only, but that larger efficiency that seeks 
first the welfare of the kingdom of men. What 
is taught would not be handed down on authority. 
Instruction would not be a militarizing of the 
minds of the young. Each student should use his 
own mind, should think his own thoughts, should 
put his own values upon things and men and be 
convinced by his own conviction. Each student 
would study reading in order to read, arithmetic 
to become an arithmetician, geography in order 
to be his own geographer by continually studying 
the earth and man's relation to it, history that he 
might learn to work with and by the aid of his- 
toric facts, science in order to himself be scientific 
by employing the methods of science, literature 
that he might make out its message and be his 
own critic and appraiser of that which is written, 
and ethics that he might make up his own mind 
about human conduct and guide his life accord- 
ingly. 

He must of course become self-supporting, but 
it is even more important that he become society- 
supporting. These are indeed but two aspects 
of one and the same requirement. He must pull 
his own weight and must meet the standards of 
living, but he must also do his part in improving 
and raising the standards of living. It is not 
enough that he be trained to fit into his environ- 
ment. He must be trained to make it over into a 



Ideals in Education i6i 

better social environment. There Is, In short, but 
one ideal of education. It is, and everywhere 
must be, the process by which each child of the 
race guided by his own interest, employing his 
own attention, and using his own mind in com- 
prehending the process of human living, becomes 
a person who thinks, desires, and acts as the 
embodiment of social laws. 



VII 
Ideals in Business 



VII 
IDEALS IN BUSINESS 

By Arthur E. Swanson, Dean Northioestern University 
School of Commerce 

IDEALS in business! What an array of con- 
flicting ideas this phrase provokes in the 
minds of the various persons who come in contact 
with business in one way or another. And the 
number of such persons is great, for there are 
comparatively few people who are not touched 
by business in some way. In this respect business 
differs from other professions or vocations. It 
is, in a way, everybody's concern. 

The nature of the Ideas which any one person 
has depends largely on the relation of that indi- 
vidual to business. The laborer has his opinions, 
the business man his, the farmer his, the social 
reformer his, the socialist his and so on. It 
would be comparatively an easy task to state the 
Ideals of business as Interpreted by almost any one 
of these groups. They have been presented ad 
infinitum and are classic. But to Interpret the 
Ideals of business In an unbiased manner Is a very 

i6s 



1 66 Ideals of America 



difficult task. There are, at least, no precedents 
to be followed. 

If any headway is to be made. It Is essential 
that there be some common understanding of the 
subject we are discussing. "Ideal," as a term, 
Is used In so many connections that it fairly brims 
over with associated meanings from the various 
fields of human experience. The meaning that 
will be ascribed to Ideals in this connection can 
best be summarized In the phrase — standards of 
action and conduct to which the leaders In busi- 
ness seek to conform. By this I do not refer to a 
few Individuals, but to that large number of Indi- 
viduals who In their own communities are re- 
garded as the leading business men. Reference 
Is had not to such standards of action which these 
men, as individuals, might philosophize about, 
but to those, which, In their business life, they 
seek to realize as a practical and attainable goal 
today or In the Immediate future. 

A legitimate question to ask at the very start 
Is: "Can we assume that there are any Ideals in 
business?" To me the answer lies In the fact 
that the human Individual seems Incapable of liv- 
ing without Ideals. Social groups. In all the 
stages of their development, give abundant evi- 
dence of Ideals which crystallize Into custom, law, 
and accepted practice. It Is safe to say that no 
social group has been found without Its accepted 



Ideals in Business 167 

ideals. Many of them are Inadequate from the 
point of view of our present thinking but, never- 
theless, they are standards for the respective 
groups. It would be only reasonable to assume 
that human Individuals, who have been so certain 
to develop their ideals in so many other spheres 
of life, should also do so In business. Observa- 
tion further leaves no doubt In my mind that there 
are Ideals In business. 

Ideals In business are the resultant of the inter- 
action of the Ideals of Individuals as members of 
society with the purposes of business. Men bring 
to business their personal Ideals. There they come 
In contact — sometimes in conflict — with the con- 
ditions that grow out of the purpose and nature 
of business. Whether the contact Is mild, mod- 
erate, or violent, depends largely upon the char- 
acter of the personal Ideals of the men who 
engage In business. On the whole, those ideals 
are fairly representative of the Ideals of the mass 
of people, with perhaps a practical touch added. 
So that there is a sense In which we can speak of 
personal Ideals as social ideals. 

The purpose of business, as we shall observe 
later, though definite. Is subject to considerable 
modification as time goes on. Business ideals con- 
sequently are the resultant In which both personal 
ideals and the purpose of business figure. It Is 
this partial dependence of business ideals on per- 



1 68 Ideals of America 

sonal ideals which gives rise to the notion that 
the personal ideals of persons engaged In busi- 
ness are also the business ideals. Our approach, 
accordingly, Is made from two directions, one the 
personal or social ideals of the men engaged In 
business and the other the purpose of business. 

Volumes have been written on personal and 
social Ideals. One of the dominant personal 
ideals In our country during the past one hundred 
years or more has been individualism. Our na- 
tional history has, until the very present day, been 
a history of pioneers. Pioneering conditions, 
economically, socially, and politically, were con- 
ditions which could have but one result in deter- 
mining the Ideals of a people, namely individual- 
ism. The great natural resources lay ready to 
be converted Into wealth. All that the Individual 
needed was the privilege to apply himself to the 
task and to rid himself of all obstacles and hin- 
drances that stood In his way. Economic inde- 
pendence and the concomitant social isolation 
translated themselves readily into independence 
socially, politically, and even religiously. This 
personal and social ideal of individualism has 
made a deep Imprint on business Ideals. There 
Is no mistaking the fact that there has been and is 
now, in business, a worship of individualism. 

Another common Ideal, more personal than 
individualism, is that of trust or confidence In 



Ideals in Business 169 

human relations. It Is evident that this personal 
ideal has thoroughly permeated business, since the 
whole credit system, in which business has Its 
being, Is founded upon it. 

The approach from the purpose of business 
itself is not so well understood and calls for a 
more detailed treatment. There are two kinds 
of business, public and private. But since private 
business dominates the Industrial world, it is the 
purpose and limitations of private business in 
which we are interested. The purpose of busi- 
ness, meaning private business, is from the view- 
point of the persons engaged In it, profit or gain. 
Socially speaking or thinking, the purpose of busi- 
ness Is to supply human beings with the various 
kinds of goods that they may want. This ac- 
counts for the fact that society permits business 
to go on. From the point of view of the person 
engaged in business, this social point of view is 
largely incidental. He is in business for an ac- 
quisitive purpose and not for a social purpose. 
He is, in many cases, happy that he is performing 
a social good. It depends on his personal ideals 
whether he Is altogether conscious of it or not. 
His purpose as a business man is to make a profit. 
This fact has such a materialistic ring that it 
embarrasses many persons In business and they 
seek to disguise it In one way or another. There 
can be no denying, however, the basic fact that 



I70 Ideals of America 



the object of business Is profit. If a business is 
run for any other purpose than profit, an inglo- 
rious end in bankruptcy will soon indicate what 
has happened. But it is one thing to say that the 
purpose of business Is profit and another to say 
that it is profit at any cost. It Is largely the con- 
ditions that are laid down In this game of gain 
and profit-making that indicate the Ideals that 
have been realized In business. The point I wish 
to make here is that, In our search for Ideals In 
business, we must be aware of the fact that these 
Ideals must, because of the purpose of business, 
be capable of realization in a sphere of action 
where gain is the dominating motive. Thus the 
very purpose of business places a limitation on 
the Ideals that can dominate It. 

As we proceed from these two angles, we find 
not one but a group of Ideals — a resultant, as 
we have said, of the interaction of personal Ideals 
with the purpose and character of business. One 
of the Ideals of this group, perhaps the dominat- 
ing one, Is success in business. Usually this means 
to succeed while respecting the rules of the game 
— usually, but not always, for man Is too ready to 
forgive or to forget Infractions of rules if the 
result Is achievement. Success as an Ideal in busi- 
ness means success not only in securing profit and 
amassing wealth, but in gaining power and per- 
sonal prestige. The business world worships the 



Ideals in Business 171 

man who has succeeded In business. Frequently 
the success is gauged by the wealth accumulated, 
but instances are numerous where it is measured 
largely by power and position gained. The per- 
sonal ideal of individualism finds expression in 
this Ideal. 

In the past the ideal of success has often meant 
success at any cost, but higher standards have 
gradually been established, sometimes by public 
opinion, and more frequently by law, to deter- 
mine the conditions which must be observed in 
profit seeking. It cannot be said that it has been 
a very prevalent ideal of business to establish 
and to raise these rules of action. Business men 
are as a whole worshipers of existing conditions 
and are apprehensive of changes. This is a nat- 
ural condition as a great part of business activity 
consists of the successful meeting of risks. Any- 
thing new or different introduces an element of 
uncertainty which the business man does not know 
how to measure, wherefore he seeks to maintain 
the status quo and to avoid change. As a con- 
sequence, although we usually find a small group 
of business leaders in favor of establishing new 
and higher standards of action, we find business 
men as a whole opposed to these changes. The 
social reformer has interpreted this opposition as 
reactionism and standpatism. I believe that a 
more adequate Interpretation is hostility to any 



172 Ideals of America 



influence that disturbs the status quo. Thus many 
of the rules that embody the ideals maintained 
today have been projected into business from 
without. It is interesting to notice how business 
adopts many of these rules of action, forced upon 
it from without, as an expression of its own ideals. 
Government regulation of railroads is an instance 
in point. 

In this connection. It can almost be said that an 
ideal of business is to maintain the status quo and 
to oppose change. It is not difficult to understand 
how such an attitude of mind is a natural one In 
business. The Importance of reducing risks so 
that they can be taken with safety is always im- 
pressed upon the business man by the very nature 
of business. 

A second ideal in business Is control or partial 
elimination of competition. It may seem anom- 
alous to speak of this as an ideal in the face of 
the oft repeated slogan, " Competition is the life 
of trade." It appears to be a fact, however, that 
in every business, when left to itself, there is in- 
variably a tendency to reduce or control competi- 
tion. There are various ways In which this tend- 
ency works. Sometimes it takes the form of the 
practices made familiar to us by so-called trusts, 
when a business either attempts by direct or in- 
direct means to stifle competition. At other times, 
it takes the form of associations of competitors 



Ideals in Business i73 



which have for their purpose the control of com- 
petition by establishing common standards of 
procedure, thereby making the competition more 
intelligent. This sometimes takes the form of 
open price associations. Again it takes the form 
of open advocacy of government regulation of 
competition, as in the case of the railroads. This 
ideal of business has In the past been regarded 
as antisocial and has been opposed by public 
opinion. For that reason it has worked Itself out 
in surreptitious ways. It is my opinion that this 
ideal might be constructive and pro-social if we 
would permit It to express itself in authorized 
business associations, supervised by the govern- 
ment and with definite powers and responsibilities. 
The third ideal is that of efficiency. This Ideal 
is, in a way, a relative one as efficiency is ordi- 
narily desired for the purpose of making a busi- 
ness successful. It cannot be said that efficiency 
has always been an ideal of business, but I think 
that it can be truthfully said that It is an ideal of 
modern business. It Is true that external Insti- 
tutions have frequently shown business how to 
be efficient. But, granting this, the business men 
of today are quick to take advantage of this help 
as soon as they come to understand how it will 
contribute to the success of business In a practical 
way. In many instances, the Ideal of efficiency 
today almost stands by itself, apart from the pur- 



174 Ide als of America 

pose of business. Business men regard it as an 
ideal to have their business well organized and 
managed, even if it be possible for them to suc- 
ceed with less efficiency. In such instances the 
ideal of the business man is not only to succeed 
but to have the work involved in his business per- 
formed in the most efficient manner. If such an 
ideal becomes prevalent, it bodes well for Amer- 
ica's industrial future. Certain it Is that, na- 
tionally, the greatest promise lies In having busi- 
ness so organized and controlled that the em- 
phasis is placed not only on profit-making but on 
efficiency. 

A fourth ideal In business is that of service. 
Service is a very much used and abused term In 
business. The meaning I intend for It Is in the 
phrase, " Make the customer wholly satisfied with 
his purchase and more satisfied, If possible, than 
he could become by doing business with any other 
organization." This Ideal Is clearly a relative 
one and could almost be taken for granted as 
being essential to the very nature and purpose of 
business. The fact Is, however, that It has not 
always been an Ideal of business. There was a 
time when the ideal of caveat emptor prevailed In 
business. This ideal Is now almost wholly super- 
seded by the reverse Ideal, that of service. 

In connection with this Ideal of service, there 
IS an Ideal which we meet with quite frequently In 



Ideals in Business i75 



business, but which we cannot say is prevalent. 
This ideal is the aspiration, entertained by many 
business men, to make of their business a perma- 
nent institution which will continue after they are 
gone. This ideal of permanency harmonizes well 
with the ideal of service, as the thought under- 
lying the latter is that, while service may not be 
immediately profitable, it will be so in the long 
run. 

In Introducing, as a fifth ideal, the social re- 
sponsibility of business. It may be that the wish 
is father to the thought. As stated, it is evident 
that the social purpose of business is to supply 
the wants of people. It can rightfully be assumed, 
furthermore, as a part of this social purpose, not 
only that these human wants be satisfied In the 
most efficient and economical way, but also that 
in this process the happiness of the Individuals 
engaged in business, including the workers, be 
promoted. 

The presence of an ideal of social responsibility 
In business, if there be such, would indicate that 
business men recognize the social function of busi- 
ness and regard themselves as responsible for the 
performance of that function. With such an 
ideal dominant, the business man will regard as 
primary demands upon his business, first, that he 
give the customer the best value obtainable at the 
prices set; second, that he definitely promote the 



176 Ideals of America 



welfare of all persons engaged in his business; 
and third, that he cooperate with the government 
in such a manner as to promote the national wel- 
fare. This ideal of social responsibility is a very 
comprehensive and inspiring one. It cannot be 
said that it is a dominating one in business, but 
likewise, it cannot be said that it is foreign to 
business. As an outcropping of personal ideals, 
it has been present in individual instances in busi- 
ness. In every generation there have been some 
Individuals who have not only understood the 
social function of business but who have sought to 
realize it. These instances, however, have been 
scattered. In modern times there can be no doubt 
that the Ideal of social responsibility, though still 
limited, is appearing In an increasing degree. 
Evidences of Its presence in business exist, for 
example, in the shape of new policies In regard 
to labor, which are finding their place in business. 
Many business men now consider themselves 
responsible for the health of their employees and 
for the maintenance of at least a living wage. It 
may be objected that these policies have a source 
not In an Ideal of social responsibility, but rather 
in an enlightened self-interest. Taken from a 
paternalistic view, If this objection holds, It Is 
pertinent to Inquire If enlightened self-interest is 
not In Itself a forced recognition of the social 
responsibility of business. The attitude which 



Ideals in Business i77 

many business men have shown toward the gov- 
ernment in relation to the war indicates, it seems 
to me, a very keen sense of social responsibility, 
particularly in a national crisis or emergency. 
Some, undoubtedly, believe this is a temporary 
attitude and that when once normal conditions are 
fully restored the former attitude will be resumed. 
Personally, I do not believe that this will be so. 
On the contrary, I am of the opinion that the 
experience these men have had will give them a 
keener appreciation of social responsibility and 
will throw into business, when normal conditions 
are resumed, a greater sense of social responsi- 
bility. 

In the interpretation of Ideals in business, it 
has not been assumed that business men are as a 
rule conscious of these ideals. It has not been 
our aim either to include all the ideals, mainly 
personal, that find expression here and there In 
business. It has been our purpose to present the 
most Important underlying Ideals which, whether 
business men be conscious of them or not, domi- 
nate In business life. Summarizing them In the 
Inverse order of their prevalence, they are, social 
responsibility, service, elimination of competition, 
efficiency, and achievement or success in business. 



vm 

Ideals in "Society" 



I 



VIII 
IDEALS IN "SOCIETY" 

By Elsie Clews Parsons, Author of "Fear and Conventionality," 
"The Old-Fashioned Woman," etc. 

1HAVE been asked to describe in this paper 
a group of social facts for which there Is no 
term, for which the best descriptive device the 
sophisticated few have contrived Is a capital let- 
ter and quotation marks. The lack of a term for 
a social phenomenon Is In Itself an arresting fact. 
It Is probably significant of some special attitude, 
perhaps an attitude of indifference, or an attitude 
of assumption. The Illinois Indians are said to 
have had no other name for themselves but Illi- 
nois, a word meaning men, " as If," adds their 
historian, "they looked upon all other Indians as 
beasts." Somewhat similar, I think, Is the popular 
use among us of the term " Society." Just as 
outside of the Illinois tribe men are not men, it 
would seem, so social Intercourse outside of " So- 
ciety" is not social intercourse. In both cases we 
have an assumption of the supreme value of a 
group of persons or of activities. It is this para- 



1 82 Ideals of America 



mount or egocentric society life, not life In society, 
I am to describe. 

Before we conclude this discussion, we may 
find a new term or two of service, but for the 
moment I shall make use of such popular expres- 
sions as, "society life," "in society," "society 
woman," "society man." But in using these con- 
venient expressions we must remember that like 
other slang phrases they are merely verbal short 
cuts. The "society man" is quite as non-existent 
as the "economic man" of a past century. Any- 
one who led a society life all his life, day in and 
day out, could qualify for a freak museum. Nor 
is the society life itself ever completely detached 
from life at large — except in the society notes in 
the newspapers. Even there, society reporters 
and editors probably realize that they too are 
taking short cuts even if they keep this realization 
fairly covert from the public. 

I am to describe society life In its American 
setting. No modern community, I surmise. Is as 
yet without society life. There is no community 
but what has rigidly prescribed ways of meeting, 
but what gives ceremonial parties of some kind 
or other, birth or wedding or funeral parties, or 
gives "purely social" feasts or dances, no com- 
munity but what holds to ceremonial visiting or 
entertaining as requisites of good form, and in 
all such organized social contact or entertainment 



Ideals in ''Society'' 183 

there are undoubtedly a sufficient number of prin- 
ciples of selection and of leadership to constitute 
within the group at large a "society group." 
From community to community the principles of 
selection vary, the type of society leader varies, 
in details the psychology of the society group 
varies. Having these differentiations in mind, we 
speak of London society, of society in Rome or 
Vienna, of New York or Chicago society. 

The society life of Chicago differs somewhat 
no doubt from the society life of New York, the 
society life of San Francisco differs from the 
society life of Philadelphia, but these differences 
I am to ignore and direct attention to the com- 
mon traits of American society life. It will not 
be difficult, I take it, to avoid being too particular; 
I am more fearful that I may be too comprehen- 
sive. In describing American society life, I may 
be describing, in part at least, the society life of 
other modern communities. This is the more 
likely as I am undertaking the description In terms 
of desire — not merely of distinctive American 
desires but of generic human desire. 

Analysis of desire is never a negligible task in 
any study of social facts, but In this connection it 
is Imperative, for the foremost distinctive char- 
acter of American society is, it appears to me, 
its composition on the basis of effectual desire. 
In other words the society group of any American 



1 84 Ideals of America 



community Is composed of persons who are suffi- 
ciently desirous to be In the group, In society, 
to pay the entrance fee, so to speak, and the fees 
to sustain membership. By these fees I mean, of 
course, psychologic adaptations, not pecuniary 
contributions. 

Not that adaptations or performances costing 
money are not expected of those In society. Com- 
paratively few persons can belong to society with- 
out having some source of revenue. Without 
means of their own they must be kept by some 
one — by a father or a husband or a wife — for 
their costs of getting about, of dress, of "pay- 
ing back," must be met. Now and then In the 
larger cities may be found a small class of men 
who get their living out of being In society, men 
who dine out for the sake of the dinner. But 
there are so many easier ways of earning a dinner 
than by making yourself agreeable at one that this 
society bread line Is never long. At best the posi- 
tion of this type of diner-out Is insecure. 

The society position of persons with either a 
limited or an uncertain Income Is also somewhat 
Insecure. Unless they are exceptionally indus- 
trious from a society point of view, exceptionally 
available or useful, they are readily relegated to 
the group of persons whom one knows but who 
are not fashionable. An assured social position 
requires an assured and a comparatively large In- 



Ideals in ''Society'' 185 

come. It requires too the spending of that income 
In certain conventional ways, a society woman or 
man must live up to her or his position. This 
does not necessarily mean expenditure for the 
direct amusement of others in society. Once a 
social position is secured, society people do not 
need to entertain, to entertain on any scale, either 
large or small, but spending In elaborate or con- 
spicuous ways Is expected of them. They are 
supposed to keep a yacht or a racing stable or 
patronize the arts or build a hospital or found 
a university. 

It may be said, therefore, that conspicuous ex- 
penditure, or, to use Veblen's term, " conspicuous 
waste," Is a desideratum if not a requisite of a 
stable social position. At any rate it Is evident 
that the society life Is more concerned with the 
processes of consumption than with those of pro- 
duction. Not that it is not economically advan- 
tageous to certain types of producers to be in 
society. For real estate men, brokers of various 
kinds, for house decorators and certain archi- 
tects, for portrait painters and drawing-room 
musicians it is good business to be in society; their 
best customers are there. For other groups, for 
college presidents, let us say, or for lawyers, the 
advantage of being fashionable is not unmixed. 
College presidents and lawyers have to do with 
a large number of persons who are not only out- 



1 86 Ideals of America 

side society but who never expect to get Into It. 
When such persons form the bulk of one's cUen' 
tele, as in the case of physicians, of clergymen, of 
politicians. It may be a positive disadvantage to 
be reputed a society man — an unfashionable pa- 
tient, or parishioner, or voter may resent the 
classification. Even to be possessed of a fashion- 
able wife, even to be in society thus vicariously, 
a privilege sometimes allowed the college presi- 
dent or the lawyer. Is a dangerous Indulgence for 
a doctor of medicine or divinity or for a states- 
man. 

On the whole, although there are persons In 
"Society" who are economically on the make, 
although the element of business In "Society" 
contributes to its dullness, as Mr. Chapman long 
since pointed out, It Is fair to state, I think, that 
"Society" does not to any considerable extent 
gratify economic desires, I. e., the desires of sub- 
sistence. 

Without a society life people would be as well 
off economically as with It, perhaps more so. 
Their consumption might be more In accord- 
ance with their personal comfort and tastes. In 
fact we sometimes see the desire to spend one's 
Income to suit oneself rather than to suit "So- 
ciety" competing successfully against the desire 
to get Into "Society" or to stay In "Society." 
Living contrary to one's tastes, the high cost of 



Ideals in ''Society'' 187 

"Society," Is now and again rebelled against — 
by men. 

What of the other primal human desire, the 
sex desire? Does American society life contribute 
to its gratification? Society life favors the sex 
desire, I think, even less than the desire for sub- 
sistence. That men and women fall In love In 
society Is merely evidence that they can fall In 
love anywhere, that lovers know no obstacles. 
Prudent lovers, however, withdraw their love af- 
fairs from the society life as far as they can. 
According to circumstances, they may be described 
as too domestic to want to go out or as afraid of 
scandal. In various ways they are Indeed made 
to understand that If they are really In earnest 
they are a nuisance, a nuisance Intolerable to 
"Society." An exception to "Society's" Intoler- 
ance of lovers Is made In the case of those young 
or Immature enough to remain even In their love- 
making under the rule of their elders. Elderly 
match-makers find In "Society" a convenient mar- 
riage market, a place of exhibition and a bargain 
counter, and so they suffer courtships which are 
brief and which are conducted strictly according 
to rule. 

A society man will carry on his love affairs 
not only outside of "Society" but even with 
women who do not belong to " Society." A so- 
ciety woman for whom this meandering Is more 



1 88 Ideals of America 

difficult may forego love-making altogether. I 
suppose that kind of negation is generally easier 
for a woman at any rate than for a man. A 
society woman is like the saloon keeper who does 
not drink; she knows that to one In her position 
love-making has particular risks, risks not only 
for the love affair itself but to her position. So 
she eschews it. In philandering or in flirting she 
seeks a substitute. 

Real love-making Is disadvantageous to a 
woman's social position. Flirting may be not 
only innocuous, It may be a help. It provides her 
with retainers. Retainers are a society asset, 
always an asset to the society woman, sometimes 
an asset to the man who supports her, her father, 
or her husband. Such retainers may be a part 
of that vicarious profit expected by men whose 
families are in "Society." 

It is notable here as In other connections that 
the sexes appear to play different roles In the so- 
ciety life. Women are the leaders. Men, we 
see, are merely their backers or their followers. 
What is the explanation of this distribution of 
roles? It Is not hard to find. "Society" means 
more to women, as we say, than to men. It ap- 
pears to satisfy desire more fully in women than 
In men. For women It satisfies the desire for 
achievement and the desire for prestige, i. e., it 
gratifies ambition. Whether or not this Is due 



Ideals in ''Society'' 189 

merely to the reason that men have other means 
of gratifying ambition, more attractive means, I 
do not attempt to say. The fact is that men do 
satisfy their desires for achievement and for pres- 
tige in other ways. The fact is too that women 
who satisfy those desires in other ways are apt 
to lose or never to acquire "social" ambition. 

To be attractive to women a society life must 
impart a sense of achievement. Aims and goals 
both extensive and detailed it must supply. Stay- 
ing in "Society" as well as getting into it must 
be arduous; they call for enterprise and skill. 
The American society life has answered these re- 
quirements. That art of conspicuous wasting it 
relies upon is in itself exigent. Other " social 
duties" are laborious, often exhausting. They 
require a kind of self-devotion which verges on 
asceticism. They appeal to the energetic and the 
self-denying spirit of the American woman. Take 
the ceremonial, for example, of leaving cards. 
Afternoon calling gives a woman, I believe, a 
quasi-mystical sense of acquiring merit. I remem- 
ber driving one lovely spring afternoon in Wash- 
ington with a lady who was leaving cards. She 
paid little or no attention to the charms of for- 
sythia or maple tree blossoms but each of the 
twenty-five calls she made appeared to give her 
the kind of satisfaction a Catholic or a Buddhist 
takes in telling the beads on his rosary. 



I go Ideals of America 

The ceremonial of calling has reached its 
apogee, I suppose, in Washington. So has the 
dinner party, or as the phrase goes in parts of 
the country, "the dinner company." But outside 
of Washington the dinner party, if not " social 
calling," affords women opportunities for self- 
exhaustion and for the concomitant feehng of ac- 
complishment. A successful dinner party leaves 
its hostess with a poignant sense of achievement 
— and a sigh of relief. That the strain of enter- 
taining is severe, we may infer not only from 
the run-down condition of the society woman at 
the close of the season but from the alacrity with 
which she sometimes goes to Europe or goes Into 
mourning, her social responsibilities being for the 
time suspended by circumstance. She welcomes 
the chance of not "going out" without losing 
caste. 

The routine of dining out and of elaborate con- 
sumption In general is fatiguing, but so is stone- 
cutting or cotton-spinning. Possibly the life of 
the steeple jack is as trying as that of the social 
cHmber. The "social caller" might find making 
or mending the clothes she calls In quite as 
laborious as leaving cards or she might be even 
more exhausted at the end of the afternoon If she 
had been calling as an agent for a charity society. 
In other words an enterprising woman could find 
other jobs just as hard as paying c^lls or putting 



Ideals in ''Society'' 191 

In an appearance or cultivating desirable ac- 
quaintances, jobs as hard if not harder. Ardu- 
ousness Is not the only charm, then, attaching to 
"social duties." To be attractive, social duties 
must be more than merely wearing. What other 
character must they have? Obviously enough 
they must bring prestige. 

Prestige does attach to the society life. Why? 
Because its activities are those of elaborate con- 
sumption, Mr. Veblen would tell us, and the 
ability to consume wastefully has always brought 
prestige, be the consumer an Indian rajah, a giver 
of potlaches on the Northwest Coast, or a pluto- 
crat in other parts of America. True, but In so 
far as not all lavish consumers are In society. In 
the United States at least, there must be another 
source of prestige besides wasteful consumption^ 
attaching to the society life. This source, I take 
It, Is excluslveness. Exclusiveness Is the greatest 
of all factors In making any group prestlgeful — 
excluslveness makes royalty prestigeful to com- 
moners, the church to laymen, men to women, 
elders to their juniors. It Is upon its excluslveness 

^ If Veblen had been more attentive to American facts he 
would not have underestimated woman's direct part in wasteful 
consumption. To him she is ever the vicarious consumer. In 
American life at least it is her will to power and not primarily 
that of her male supporter that is gratified by elaborate consump- 
tion. The average American woman wants to be in society and 
she knows that the more elaborate her consumption the better 
chance she has to satisfy this social ambition. Is it necessary to 
look further for a clue to our high cost of living? 



192 Ideals of America 

that the society life most depends for Its charm 
and for its power. By keeping people out it 
makes them want to get in. Wanting to get in, 
they become willing to comply with the entrance 
conditions — entrance conditions first of a com- 
paratively large circle and then of circles within 
circles. To be in society is one thing, to be in 
smart society Is another thing. But in either case 
the entrance conditions largely conform to the 
standards set by those within — standards, as we 
have noted, of consumption, but also non-economic 
standards in special modes of living, of dressing, 
of eating, of talking, of feeling, and of thinking, 
and first and foremost standards of exclusiveness, 
i. e., of willingness to exact conformity of others. 
Obviously we are dealing here, are we not, with 
caste psychology, with a caste complex? As in 
any caste In India or elsewhere. In "Society" con- 
formity is required In matters of dress, of food 
(eating In accredited places or having food served 
in accredited ways). In matters of shelter or of 
place of shelter (living In fashionable streets 
or fashionable parts of town, going for the season 
or the summer to fashionable resorts). In matters 
of language, of occupations, and of mating. 

Conformity Is as necessary In this American 
caste as In castes elsewhere, but between it and 
other castes there are two important distinctions. 
The first distinction Is one that keeps us as a rule 



Ideals in ''Society'' i93 

from recognizing this social classification as a 
caste at all. Since Its membership Is composed on 
a basis of effectual desire, as we have noted, made 
up of persons possessed of fitting desires and free 
from desires that might embarrass or complicate, 
the caste appears exempt from some of the more 
blatant forms of caste rigidity, from the rigidity 
of membership through birth, for example, or 
through family connection. In the same family 
can we not see one brother in society and another 
In the church or In the army, one sister, the height 
of fashion and the other described as too serious 
or too literary or too artistic to enjoy going out — 
a decent paraphrase for her outcasting? 

The second distinction about this particular 
American caste has to do with sex. This Ameri- 
can caste requires a far less degree of conformity 
from Its men than from its women. I can't recall 
ever sitting at a dinner party next to a barber 
or dancing at a smart ball with a barkeeper, but 
on the whole occupation taboos are much lighter 
upon men in society than upon women. So are 
dress taboos. An unfashionably dressed man is 
put up with. So is a man who lives in a cheap 
lodging in an obscure street. So Is a man who 
ordinarily uses correct English, or occasionally 
eats in an unfashionable restaurant, or even in a 
fashionable restaurant with unfashionable friends. 
In women these offenses are hardly tolerated. 



194 Ideals of America 

For It is the women In society who are responsible. 
Not that the men are given greater freedom 
theoretically, they are merely more negligible. It 
matters less what they do. The society woman 
must live according to the rule she makes because 
she counts. She it Is who counts, she It Is who 
reigns. There are no kings In American *' So- 
ciety," there are only queens. American *' So- 
ciety" Is a gynocratic caste, a woman-controlled 
caste. 

As requested I have thus far been describing 
social facts not as they might be but as they arc. 
It has been suggested, however, that the final aim 
of this City Club symposium should be a recon- 
struction of social Ideals. If you accept the 
analysis of '* Society" as a gynocratic caste, the 
only Ideal it ought to entertain, you will of course 
argue. Is the Ideal of suicide. There Is no oppor- 
tunity open here to Idealists for the reconstruction 
of an Institution. As democrats, as feminists, as 
humanists, they must contemplate suicide or, from 
the point of view of outsiders, murder. 

As a matter of fact, this sociological murder Is 
In process. Together with other bits of an archaic 
social system even today the society life is being 
scrapped — scrapped by women for themselves 
just as long since men began to scrap it for them- 
selves. In a growing democracy (and the suf- 
frage movement if nothing else Is proof that this 



Ideals in ''Society'' i95 

is a growing democracy) it becomes more and 
more difficult to make yourself count through 
keeping others from counting — to work the prin- 
ciple of exclusiveness. In this country exclusive- 
ness based on family lingers on only in isolated 
New England or Pennsylvania communities, in 
certain Boston or Philadelphia or Baltimore 
circles. Exclusiveness based on wealth, or rather 
on its expenditure, remains a more workable prin- 
ciple. And yet, given such opportunities for ac- 
quiring wealth as we possess and no sumptuary 
laws on expending it, caste exclusiveness through 
consumption is but a flimsy principle. The would- 
be exclusive caste becomes inevitably a mere eco- 
nomic class whose boundaries are too readily 
crossed to be thought of as boundaries at all. Nor 
is it any easier for our gynocratic caste to keep to 
itself non-economic distinctions in language, in 
bearing, in dressing, in ways of living in general. 
American habits of imitation make such caste dis- 
tinctions short lived. A caste which fails to ex- 
clude and which cannot keep to itself any cultural 
monopoly is certainly in danger of its life. 

Imitation and economic elasticity — these are 
the enemies of our gynocratic caste from without. 
Within its organization are other perils. It faces 
a shortage of leaders. Increasing outlets for 
feminine energy and ambition operate upon our 
gynocratic caste as increasing social opportunities 



196 Ideals of America 

for the will to power among men have been seen 
to operate from time to time on politics or upon 
the church or upon the army. Other jobs prove 
more attractive. Moreover once a leisure-class 
woman has become a producer or inventor con- 
sumption ceases to be her supreme concern. 
Spending becomes simplified because its elabora- 
tion is too great a drain on her energy and atten- 
tion. Moreover spending no longer appears to 
her as a kind of maker of values — the curious 
pseudo-production it appears to the "born shop- 
per." Her sense of achievement through pro- 
prietorship is lessened. 

Nor does a woman interested in her work prize 
the kind of prestige elaborate consumption brings 
her. She does not care to make that particular 
appeal to women nor does she like the relation- 
ship to men it involves. She is likely to want 
something more in a man than a backer or a re- 
tainer. She wants a companion. She soon finds 
that there are no "interesting" men in "Society," 
as we say, or that if they are met there from 
time to time for fortuitous reasons the "Society" 
background is not favorable to acquaintance. If 
she has once belonged to the caste, she does not 
of course deliberately cut loose from it. Some- 
what like an irresponsible man she drifts in and 
out of it, naturally from a caste point of view a 
demoralizing factor. Demoralizing, disintegrat- 



Ideals in ''Society'' i97 

ing or not, at least to the organization of the 
society life she contributes nothing. Her talents 
are lost to it. Above a certain economic class 
level, every thoroughly converted feminist is, to 
the extent of her vitahty, a loss in vitality to the 
gynocratic caste. 

If the feminist bent is taken in youth, the cir- 
cumstance may not only deprive the gynocratic 
caste of a potential leader, it tends to depress 
its value as a marriage market. Not only is the 
girl not prepared at a finishing school to take 
her proper place in society, she begins, in another 
type of school or in college, to acquire the seeds 
of revolution against the gynocracy, in so far as 
it is a gerontocracy, a control by the elders, and 
particularly a control of her through her sex or 
her sex relations. She begins to make up her 
mind to mate to please herself, not to please her 
seniors. Among the many ways this decision is 
disintegrating to the rule of the elders is its effect 
upon the desire of the young to go into society. 
It means that girls will not feel so " crazy about 
society" because there only can they meet men — 
such as they are. Youthful feminists like older 
feminists want to meet all kinds of men, not only 
the men admitted into society by their mothers, 
but the men who never think of applying for ad- 
mittance. These men, girls will meet in their work 
and in their social intercourse at large. As for 



1 98 Ideals of America 

those young men who go Into society but who go 
only from time to time and reluctantly at that, 
they will go still more sporadically when the bait 
that attracts them, the girls they can't meet any- 
where else, is withdrawn. And so the circle re- 
volves. The fewer the young men in society, the 
less attracted are the girls, even the old-fashioned 
girls. The more aberrant the girls, the more un- 
willing the men to "go out." Given a few more 
such revolvings and "Society" as a place for 
making marriages will be quite neglected, the last 
vestige of marriage by service, so to speak, sub- 
servience to the fashionable dowager, having dis- 
appeared. This escape from society's match- 
making machinery is, I need hardly say, part of 
that general escape of the young from the old 
which is the most Important, if but little noticed, 
social fact of our times. 

The gynocratic caste suffers in its human com- 
position from the revolution of youth and frorn 
the social development in general of women. It 
suffers in its institutional frame-work from an- 
other development peculiar to modern culture. I 
refer to the modern change of attitude towards 
what we may call life's crises. In early societies 
changes In life are met with ceremonials — with 
maternity, birth, adolescence, mating, and death 
rites. In modern life this crisis ceremonialism Is 
passing — much of it has passed. Upon it the 



Ideals in "Society'' i99 

gynocratic caste has depended for part of its sig- 
nificance, i. e., It has put these ancient social cere- 
monies to its credit. Coming-out parties are 
"society events," weddings are described as 
" fashionable," funerals as " representative." 
During the last few years, however, debutante 
entertainments have been considered rather ridicu- 
lous affairs and fashionable weddings a little vul- 
gar. Funeral rings and scarfs and gloves are no 
longer presented to the mourners; mourners are 
even asked not to send flowers. It will not be 
long before a wedding breakfast will be as bour- 
geois as throwing rice In a railway station or as 
a funeral feast, and standing up all afternoon 
with a "bud" as antiquated as sitting up all night 
with a corpse. In other words, the occasions upon 
which the gynocratic caste can make both a public 
justification of its existence and attract attention 
to Itself are diminishing. 

Within the caste Itself too there Is rebellion 
now and again or pseudo-rebellion against self- 
manifestations. " Functions " are derided by the 
fashionable.' To be seen at a "tea" Is an affiche- 
ment that you are not to be seen anywhere else. 
To be asked to women's lunch parties, the most 
characteristic form of entertainment American 
'"Society" has produced, has come to mean In cer- 
tain circles that you are not asked to dinner 
parties. A really smart woman not only never 



200 Ideals of America 

leaves dinner cards ; except as an act of condescen- 
sion she never goes to a "real dinner party." As 
for seeing her name in the society columns of a 
newspaper or her picture in the Sunday supple- 
ment, she greatly resents such newspaper imper- 
tinence. It is a blow to her social prestige, she 
feels, to be made so common. A social leader, 
lives he or she in the Vatican or in an American 
palace, cannot afford to be inspected at the option 
of others. This attitude of safeguarding prestige 
through safeguarding privacy, through objecting 
to newspaper notoriety, may be expected to 
spread. Like other fashionable attitudes it will 
be imitated. Then the wretched society reporter 
will not only feel himself more of a detective than 
ever, but more of a fakir. His accounts of the 
outermost circles of " Society," of its fringes, of 
life for example at fashionable hotels, will be less 
and less heeded and more and more curtailed until 
one day the society column will find itself among 
the historic curiosities of journalism. 

Without boundaries, without leaders, without 
matrimonial baits, without means of accrediting 
or advertising itself through crisis ceremonials or 
through newspaper notoriety, what hope of a 
future existence is there, we may well ask, for the 
gynocratic caste? 

But surely along one line at least there lies 
hope or vitality for the society life, the conserva- 



Ideals in ''Society" 201 



tive may urge. However undemocratic and anti- 
feminist it may be, however unworthily it gratifies 
the will to power of idle women and irretrievable 
snobs, however neglectful it is of other primary 
desires, does it not meet after all one of the most 
urgent of human impulses, the gregarious im- 
pulse, the desire for company? The society life 
does satisfy the desire for mere company — 
among women. Perhaps men have less of this 
desire, perhaps they care more for the companion- 
ship which is more than mere company. But even 
women's desire for company the society life satis- 
fies only in a timid, half-hearted way. A degree 
of segregation, as we have noted, the privacy 
of exclusiveness, is so necessary to a prestigeful 
position. Besides, as women acquire other forms 
of human- association, association with fellow- 
workers, with professional colleagues, with bona 
fide playmates, the various forms of association 
men have, they too will be bored, much as men 
are, by those less personal ways of being together 
characteristic of the society life. Small sets of 
men and women with common interests and sym- 
pathies will form spontaneously to work and play 
together — a grouping that occurs already in 
Europe and appears to be on the eve of occurring 
in New York. There it may be said to await only 
the disposal of what, for lack of a less flippant 
term, we must call the "tagger-on spouse prob- 



202 Ideals of America 

lem," a problem that, humorously enough, even 
the gynocratic caste cannot keep from trying to 
solve although solution will contribute so im- 
portantly to its own undoing. 

But outside of " sets," of intimate groups of 
fellow-workers and playmates, salt of life as they 
are to many, is there no need of other forms of 
social intercourse, of more general meeting places, 
of opportunities for the chance encounter? Cer- 
tainly there is, and here at length is a definite and 
concrete opportunity for the constructive human- 
ist. All kinds of general meeting places are in 
order — for all kinds of persons — city and 
country club-houses, gardens, parks, beaches, boat- 
houses, skating-rinks, outdoor and indoor danc- 
ing floors, lobbies in concert-hall and playhouse — 
in short the very meeting places that are springing 
up everywhere under our eyes. These places 
are increasing rapidly. They will increase more 
rapidly and they will gain distinction once the 
need of them begins to appeal to the imagination 
of the social artist, of the lover of pleasant back- 
grounds and quiet outlooks. Even today places 
of assembly are becoming more decent and more 
beautiful in form, although they are dominated 
as yet both by commercialism and by the old 
spirit of group exclusiveness and of group appre- 
hensiveness. A new democratization, a new fear- 
lessness, and a new freedom will pervade them in 



Ideals in ''Society'' 203 

time, however, and then they will properly fulfill 
their social functions, alike for the adventurous 
individual who seeks in them a setting for the 
chance encounter and for the gregarious lover of 
his kind to whom the sense of the herd is com- 
forting. 



IX 
Ideals in Music 



IX 
IDEALS IN MUSIC 

By Edward Dickinson, Professor of the History and Criticism 
of Music, Oberlin College, Ohio 

LOTZE, having the history of music before 
his eyes, declared music to be the most social 
of the arts. A distinguished French scholar as- 
serts that all the forms of music " are tributaries 
of social life. From one end of its history to the 
other it has an evolution parallel to that of so- 
ciety." ^ But the directors of education in this 
country, not having the history of music before 
their eyes, have hitherto neglected to take full 
advantage of the power that music possesses for 
mental and moral discipline, and have left it to 
wander to its rightful position In the educational 
scheme through unregulated and devious channels. 
In recent days, however, with a celerity that 
would be astonishing if we were not accustomed 
to the suddenness with which Ideas start up and 
spread in this country, music, both as an abstract 
art and also in alliance with poetry and the drama, 
is flooding our collective life, and the call for 

1 Combarieu, Music, its Laivs and Evolution, authorized trans- 
lation. 

207 



2o8 Ideals of America 

music as a sort of inherent right is becoming so 
peremptory that such philistine bodies as common 
councils and boards of estimate are giving heed to 
it, and colleges and universities that have long 
been scornfully indifferent are becoming aware 
that here is a challenge which they cannot pru- 
dently continue to ignore. 

And so the message I bring in respect to musi- 
cal conditions in America is one of high satisfac- 
tion, because I see in rapid progress a movement 
which is the product of a strong purpose aimed 
at an object that is clearly conceived. The musical 
currents which have so long been cross currents 
rather than parallel, are now flowing together. 
The activities which may be summed up as crea- 
tive, reproductive, and educational are moving 
into step with one another, with the educational 
motive at the front. The leaders of musical 
progress are coming more and more under the 
control of the will to make music serviceable to 
the many rather than a gratification to the few; 
to make music a factor in popular education and a 
stimulating force In social life. There will be 
no reaction against this tendency; the problem is 
not how to keep it alive, but how to bring it under 
wise control; how to unify the various activities 
involved and develop and systematize the methods 
by which the great end may be most completely 
attained. 



Ideals in Music 209 

The obstacles that have delayed the fulfillment 
of the ideal which the best musical minds in this 
country have long cherished are of two kinds : 
first, the disorganization in the ranks of music 
teachers and the absence of scientific methods, 
and, second, the blindness of the leaders of gen- 
eral education to the social and educative values 
of music which the nations of Europe recognized 
centuries ago. In view of the first we should be 
cautious in condemnation of the second. The fact 
that musical instruction, unlike any other element 
in education, was for a long time, and is to a great 
extent now, mainly In the hands of private 
teachers explains much of the dIfHculty of the 
situation. These private teachers, although for 
the most part conscientious and zealous to accom- 
plish good things, have been, in a multitude of 
cases, imperfectly trained even In the technique of 
their art and still more so in pedagogic method, 
and until recently have been but little inclined to 
establish any organization for mutual help. Even 
now there Is only the faint beginning of an attempt 
to bring about cooperation between their work 
and that of the public school. The directors of 
the public schools were likewise Ignorant of the 
alms and the means of solid musical education. 
Judging by what they saw of the private methods 
or lack of method around them, they assumed 
that music teaching was merely designed for the 



2IO Ideals of America 

purpose of making players and singers. "This," 
they implicitly declared, "we could not do if we 
would, and we would not if we could, and there's 
an end.'' 

In course of time, however, a new light broke 
upon the music teachers and the public-school 
authorities. Both parties came to see that, as 
Hermann Kretzschmar has said, "instruction in 
song in the folk schools is not merely a musical 
question, It Is a universal culture question," and 
they set themselves to work to devise a system 
that would helpfully combine with the courses al- 
ready established. No one will assert that musi- 
cal instruction in the public schools of the country 
at large is yet much beyond its infancy; methods 
are still Imperfect and a standardized system is 
not yet attained. But there is probably no other 
department of our national educational scheme 
that Is being more eagerly overhauled with a view 
to bringing It under the control of reason. In 
place of the old custom of merely teaching a few 
songs by rote, to be quickly forgotten, music Is 
taught as a language, — It is animated by intelli- 
gence, It becomes a conscious expression of emo- 
tion, and It is made to react In a vitalizing way 
upon the emotion and the understanding. It Is 
widely recognized that one who directs the in- 
struction In music In the common schools must 
have as specific and thorough preparation as one 



Ideals in Music 211 

who teaches In any other branch of learning. He 
must know not only his subject but also the nature 
of the child mind; in fact child psychology is his 
subject. The whole method rests upon the child's 
instincts and natural aptitudes, so that his musical 
taste and proficiency grow simply and naturally 
with his general growth, and music becomes a joy 
because it Is a very constituent of his budding life. 
I appeal for respect and encouragement to those 
skillful, broad-minded, and devoccd men and 
women who are finding a congenial place in con- 
stantly increasing numbers among the supervisors 
of music in our public schools. 

Musical Instruction In the schools Is enlarging 
its borders. Until recently only vocal music was 
taught, but now Instrumental music is added. So 
far has progress gone that it will soon cease to 
excite surprise when a high-school or even a 
grammar-school orchestra performs a program of 
classic works in a manner to give pleasure even to 
a professional musician. These orchestras join 
on occasion with the school chorus, and oratorios 
and cantatas of the great masters are performed 
by high-school girls and boys to the admiration of 
city fathers and the proud relatives of the young 
musicians. 

The leaders of the new musical education In 
the public schools are not content with perform- 
ance as a sign of progress. They believe that 



212 Ideals of America 

musical intelligence and good taste are of still 
more value in the nurture of youthful character, 
and hence courses in musical theory and the his- 
tory and appreciation of music are insisted upon 
as a prime necessity. " The better half of musical 
training," a distinguished educator has said, "is 
good listening." The adoption of this Idea in 
the curriculum of our schools will help to raise a 
barrier against the tide of vulgarity which encom- 
passes them on every side, and to cultivate a 
wholesome taste which, rather than the drilling 
of performers, must be the aim of musical Instruc- 
tion among the masses of our young people. 

As In all phases of life, so It Is in popular 
musical education — as soon as one problem is 
solved others appear. It is very evident that the 
private teacher can never be dispensed with, for 
the work of the public schools must be with chil- 
dren In groups — that is, classes — and cannot 
deal at all with those who desire a separate, in- 
dividual training. Under the conditions that gen- 
erally prevail, the child must be balked In his 
effort after proficiency or else he must add a 
heavy, often injurious weight to the labor required 
of him In the public school. The solution of this 
difficulty lies in some kind of cooperation between 
the schools and the private teachers. The schools 
must consent to allow the outside work to take 
the place of one of the estabHshed school depart^ 



Ideals in Music 213 

ments, and credits to be given therefor. The 
practical difficulties in the way of this arrange- 
ment are obvious, for the school hesitates to 
assume responsibility for teaching which it does 
not control, and the outside teacher objects to 
having his methods dictated to him by a body of 
which he is not a recognized and privileged part. 
The school must be sure that this work is solid 
enough to be entitled to its credits, and how can 
it be sure of this unless it oversees it and examines 
its results? Notwithstanding these impediments, 
the experiment Is under trial in many places, with 
results that are claimed to be wholly satisfactory. 
The benefits of this plan, it is easily seen, work In 
two directions, for the inevitable tendency must 
be to weed out the incompetent private teacher, 
to discourage the indifferent pupil, to bring about 
an increased cooperation between pupil and music 
teacher, between music teacher and school, be- 
tween parents and school, between one teacher 
and another, together with a more serious view, 
among all four parties, of the value of music as a 
character-builder and social tonic. 

The whole subject of public-school music teach- 
ing received a new illumination In the report upon 
music In the public schools of the United States 
prepared by Mr. Earhart of Pittsburgh, chairman 
of the music committee of the National Education 
Association. In writing to the Secretary of the 



214 Ideals of America 

Interior, to whom this report was sent, Dr. 
Claxton, United States Commissioner of Educa- 
tion, said: "Sooner or later we shall not only 
recognize the culture value of music, but we shall 
begin to understand that, after the beginnings of 
reading, writing, arithmetic, and geometry, music 
has greater practical value than any other subject 
taught in the schools." 

Equally significant in a survey of contemporary 
Ideals in music is the homage which the art is be- 
ginning to receive from the colleges and universi- 
ties. I say beginning to receive, for the long 
hostility of the "higher education" to music and 
its sister arts is a cause of sadness to those who 
are aware of the place which the fine arts hold In 
the history of civilization. The reluctance of the 
college to welcome music may be to some extent 
ascribed to the lack of agreement among musi- 
cians as to what constitutes musical education, the 
weakness of music teachers on the pedagogical 
side, their frequent lack of broad general culture, 
and the difficulty of adapting an art which appeals 
so powerfully to the sense and the emotion to a 
copartnership with studies which aim primarily at 
the discipline of the intellect. 

Musicians are fond of offering another ex- 
planation less creditable to the intelligence of the 
college governing bodies. A few years ago the 
president of a prominent New England college, 



Ideals in Music 215 

when it was proposed to Introduce courses in 
musical science, Inquired If there was enough In 
the subject to occupy a student for a term. On 
another occasion, the executive committee of the 
trustees of a very distinguished institution put 
themselves on record as holding the opinion that 
the training of the powers of expression through 
musical performance should be classed with box- 
making or any of the simpler processes of manual 
training, and hence was not compatible with the 
high dignity of the college tradition. 

These absurd Instances, however, must already 
be considered as belated survivals of worn-out 
prejudice. The long reluctance of the college is 
fast breaking down under the stress of a larger 
conception of the function of the college in a 
fluent democracy. If the democracy feels the 
need of art, it should be taught to look toward 
the college for aid In guiding its choices. No less 
does the college itself need the humanizing In- 
fluence of music; and the musical profession, which 
Is ever coming more deeply into sympathy with 
the whole people, needs the scholarly Inspiration 
which the college can afford. That these two edu- 
cational factors are offering to one another the 
right hand of fellowship Is a promise of advantage 
to both the contracting powers. 

It is Inevitable that music in entering the classic 
— shades, shall I say — no, the open air and the 



2i6 Ideals of America 

sunlit spaces of our American colleges, should 
enter hand in hand with the drama and the arts of 
design, also long banished from what should 
always be their home and sanctuary. The art 
museum and the theater are taking their places 
upon the campus beside the concert hall, and all 
of them not far from the chapel. So it should 
and must be. Is not Mr. Ralph Adams Cram a 
true seer when he says in his inspiring book, The 
Ministry of Art: "The day is not far distant 
when the school of art will be not an accessory or 
an adjunct to a university, but as absolutely and 
intimately a part of its prescribed curriculum as 
the ancient languages or philosophy or letters?" 
For *' art is a great language for the voicing of 
the greatest things, and he who is not learned 
therein, either in its active or its passive aspect, 
is to that extent ignorant, unlearned, uncultured." 
Mr. Cram's allusion to art in its passive aspect 
is a reminder that the colleges at present incline 
to the view that the music course, like the aesthetic 
courses in general, should have a cultural rather 
than a vocational purpose. The question Is still 
open, however, and opinions as well as practice 
differ. With some institutions the conception of 
the function of music in the higher education is in 
accord with that which generally prevails In the 
universities of the continent of Europe, which 
" are concerned chiefly with the Intellectual train- 



Ideals in Music 217 

ing which is necessary for all those who would 
gain a broader grasp of musical art than the mere 
technical view." ^ In America the increasing 
strength of such a conception does not necessarily 
exclude the teaching of music as a practical art. 
Some of our colleges give credit toward the a.b. 
degree for playing and singing; others only for 
work in musical theory or history or both. Some 
maintain music schools with pupils who take no 
work in the department of arts and sciences; 
others merge the department of music in the gen- 
eral college scheme on the same terms as the 
department of literature. Notwithstanding the 
fact that the cultural ideal must in the nature of 
the case be uppermost, the fact that a large and 
increasing number of young men and women, 
whose tastes and talents lead them into the musi- 
cal profession, likewise desire the liberal culture 
which the college gives tends to force the college 
into a line of action which will minister to this 
double need. For why, it may be asked, should 
the college not train teachers for music as well 
as for literature or dramatic expression? Never- 
theless, while Professor Baker of Harvard may 
train playwrights and actors, while successful com- 
posers may issue from the classroom of Professor 



1 Dr. Otto Kinkeldey, Music in the Universities of Europe and 
America; Proceedings of the Music Teachers' National Asso- 
ciation, 1915. 



2i8 Ideals of America 

Parker at Yale, and skillful pianists receive their 
training at Smith or Oberlin, these results will 
always appear as by-products, and the college, 
leaving the training of composers and virtuosos 
to the professional schools and private teachers, 
will find its chief mission in diffusing the refining 
influences of music throughout the academic body, 
in striving to convince its students of the neces- 
sity of art as an agent of civilization, in order 
that they may go forth ready to lend their prestige 
in aid of all the influences that tend to promote 
sound musical education everywhere and to dif- 
fuse taste and intelligent enthusiasm among the 
people. 

Musical education in America is already feel- 
ing the guiding hand of the college graduate. 
The number of college graduates in the musical 
profession in this country would surprise most of 
us. Glance over the reports of the proceedings 
of that very Influential body, the Music Teachers* 
National Association, for the past ten years, and 
see how many of its leading spirits are connected 
with colleges, universities, and theological semi- 
naries. 

A similar tendency to bring musical educational 
leadership Into the control of liberally educated 
men and women would meet us In examining the 
discussions at the national conventions of public- 
school supervisors. 



Ideals in Music 219 



Emanating from these and other centers of 
scholarly investigation and practice we discover 
remarkable progress in strengthening musical In- 
struction In all directions. The state associations 
of music teachers are rapidly gaining In the char- 
acter of their papers and debates. There are 
efforts in some of the states to permit or even 
require private teachers to offer themselves for 
examination before boards appointed by the state 
or the state teachers' association, with certificates 
of competence In return for satisfactory responses. 
Throughout the country there is in progress a 
powerful effort to reduce the Inevitable waste by 
demanding higher qualifications on the part of 
teachers and effecting something like unification 
and standardization. 

You would expect that a professional musical 
educator would give a prominent place to the 
phenomena of progress In the higher Institutions 
and public schools. Permit me now to lay before 
you what I might almost call the romance of 
recent musical progress in our country. Indeed is 
there not something that Is stirring to the imagina- 
tion, something quickening to the heart, in the 
rush of musical art to regain its old rights of 
citizenship and become a possession of the com- 
mon life? Music In the last few years has seized 
upon the affections of the people at large as It 
never has before In the history of this country. 



220 Ideals of America 

It is striving to become a constant feature In the 
national life and habit. From its former shelters 
in the opera house, the concert hall, the detached 
music school, and private studio, It is extending 
not only into the common school but also into the 
city's crowded streets, into the park and play- 
ground, joining hands with the outdoor festival 
and pageant, and now at last inspiring whole com- 
munities to proclaim a new-discovered social con- 
sciousness in verse and melody. So rapid Is this 
movement of music back to the people that even 
while I gather the facts for its illustration my 
story is already old. 

This movement has taken forms which cannot 
be wholly distinguished from one another be- 
cause they are integral parts of one large impulse. 
The developments In the schools and colleges of 
which I have already spoken are a characteristic 
feature of It; — the manifestations of which I now 
proceed to speak are found In the establishment 
of musical settlements In the poor quarters of our 
cities, the free concerts for the people provided by 
city and town administrations and benevolent or- 
ganizations, and latest of all the rise of what Is 
called " community music." These developments 
are all factors In the reaction of music (and in 
this case reaction means progress) away from 
the exclusive control of professional and commer- 
cial interests to Its old status as a universal social 



Ideals in Music 221 

Interest, brought directly to the people and 
adopted by them as the expression of a common 
inherent emotion. Such music was In Its original 
condition. It was Inseparably bound up with 
poetry and the dance — these activities not, as 
afterward, delegated to individuals detached from 
the mass, but constituting, however crude, a 
composite art which was communal, the expres- 
sion of religious or other sentiment by means In 
which the whole group could participate. In the 
stage of Intellectual development next above the 
primitive condition, that represented by the more 
refined folk song, music was still the passion and 
joy of the community, where the poet and com- 
poser were lost In the aggregate, the performer 
for the moment In no way distinguished from his 
neighbors In function or experience. 

With the rise of the opera, the development of 
the concert system, the Increasing complexity of 
musical science, and the appearance of composers 
and virtuosos who raised music to a brilliancy 
which required trained specialists for Its full ex- 
ercise, musical practice was concentrated Into 
centers where wealth and fashion ruled, and the 
naive music of the people shrunk away and timidly 
withdrew Into obscurity. Even in the music of the 
church a process quite similar may be observed. 

Notwithstanding these centralizing and spe- 
cializing tendencies a reaction was bound to come. 



222 Ideals of America 

Music can never thrive if it is severed from its 
sources in the popular heart. In spite of the enor- 
mous technical developments of the nineteenth 
century, its greatest composers, with the excep- 
tion of the writers of grand opera (for grand 
opera has always been an aristocratic, unsocial 
affair) never quite lost touch with the music of 
the people. The most significant fact, as I con- 
sider it, in the history of European music in the 
last twenty or thirty years is the instinctive turning 
of the current of artistic creation back to the 
people for new refreshment, and the revival of a 
definite nationalism in place of a vague cosmopoli- 
tanism in musical style and practice. This reac- 
tion is characterized by a renewal of the study of 
folk song on the part of composers as well as 
scholars, the increased effort for the diffusion of 
musical culture among the masses of the people, 
the entrance into the current of progress of the 
less musically developed outlying peoples, such as 
the Finns and the Roumanians, and the determined 
efforts of the nations of long musical traditions, 
particularly the French and the English, to throw 
off the dominance of foreign example, and develop 
styles which the aroused national consciousness 
may recognize as conformable to its own needs 
and ideals. 

All the phases of this popular, nationalizing 
tendency — even the last mentioned, the effort to 



Ideals in Music 223 

attain musical Independence — are making ex- 
traordinary headway In America at the present 
moment. Distinguished In many ways, certainly, 
from the analogous phenomena In Europe, as our 
conditions are different, this American movement 
Is urged onward by similar motives and Is equally 
a sign of vigorous health. Its purpose Is to bring 
music more Intimately into the constant life of the 
whole people, to make music a potent factor In 
education, to add a new charm to the life of the 
home, and to give freer opportunity to the Ameri- 
can composer, performer, and director. And now, 
especially observe In this connection that the best 
promise of this American movement lies in the 
fact that It involves a conception of music as an 
art that serves interests other than Its own sep- 
arate advantage. The German historian Krctz- 
schmar distinguishes two orders of musical art — 
music as a free art, and music that serves. Music 
is free, according to his definition, when the art 
work is loosened from all outer interests and 
flourishes alone as art for the sake of art. This 
function of music, he admits, must be acknowl- 
edged; healthful growth does certainly require 
scientific training in private studios and conserva- 
tories, generous patronage of the professional 
musician, and the public exhibition of technical 
mastery in composition and execution. But some- 
thing more is required. Music must also have 



224 Ideals of America 

other motives than self-assertion for delight In 
its own beauty; it must enter into the larger life 
of the time and unite with other efforts whose 
ends are found in the extension of individual and 
collective welfare. Music should be a servant and 
not a master. "Music, like all the arts," Kretz- 
schmar asserts, "needs the closest connection with 
culture and life; the people cannot draw their 
aesthetic nourishment, their love for art and their 
sense of it, from museums and galleries and con- 
cert halls, but it must be offered to them in the 
streets and squares and the church ; It must mingle 
richly In their labor, their education, their emo- 
tional llfe."i 

The new "community music" is allied to the 
work of the " community center," which is ex- 
tending all over the country. Church music is 
the one form of the art which In its conception 
and uses can never be " free," although It has 
sometimes perversely lost sight of this truth. But 
the music of the church does need a discipline 
which will bring it into more perfect harmony 
with the spirit of devotion to which It is tributary; 
and In this direction also we find progress, slow 
and discouraging as It often may seem. The sur- 
prising recent development of that most beautiful 
of communal enterprises, the outdoor pageant, 

^ Hermann Kretzschraar, Musikalische Zeitfragen. 



Ideals in Music 225 

would be Impossible without the aid of music, for 
rhythm In movement and rhythm in sound are the 
very breath of its being. We must also believe, 
I think, that the astonishing growth of " free " 
music in the multiplication of concerts of every 
description and of composers and performers, in 
the enormous development of all the musical 
manufactures and trades, is vitally related to the 
social and philanthropic movement. We rnay 
find here convincing evidence of what I believe 
to be the truth, that music attains full mastery 
of its nobler powers only when it consents to be- 
come a servant. 

It was recently my privilege to visit the Music 
School Settlement on the lower east side of New 
York. Here I found a full-grown conservatory 
of music in the most squalid section of the city — 
a conservatory with more than eight hundred 
students representing over twenty nationalities, 
and a large and efficient faculty. The institution 
Is supported by the Income from a moderate en- 
dowment, tuition fees which range from ten to 
fifty cents, and gifts from regular and irregular 
patrons. 

I was cordially received by the director who 
gave me the history of the school from Its origin 
in a little violin class that was started a few years 
ago by an adventurous and charitable young 
woman. Then we proceeded on a tour of Inspec- 



226 Ideals of America 

tion. Adjoining the director's office was the li- 
brary with seven thousand musical compositions 
and twenty-two hundred books. I went into some 
of the teaching rooms and felt the atmosphere 
of earnestness that pervaded them. In the con- 
cert hall the school orchestra was tuning up for 
its weekly rehearsal. I read in the annual report 
the long list of gifts of money, of tickets to con- 
certs, operas, plays, and lectures, and a delightful 
record of miscellaneous contributions, from 
musical instruments and books to apples, doilies, 
Christmas greens, and — most charmingly sug- 
gestive — "wood for the Christmas fires" from 
the Story-hour Children. 

Other beneficent ministries attach themselves 
by natural affinity to this musical benevolence. 
There are athletic, dramatic, social, and literary 
clubs, ranging from adults down to the youngest 
club of boys, who dubbed themselves "The Peter 
Pan Club" after that glorious day when Maude 
Adams gave them a magical trip to the "Never 
Never Land." There are Sunday night "At 
Homes," aesthetic dancing classes, a Mothers* 
Club, a Parents' Association, the Music School 
Guild of young people who work in any way that 
may promote the interests of the school and its 
clientele, summer camps and excursions into the 
country. The whole institution throbs with 
healthful, joyful life. Outside is a seemingly end- 



Ideals in Music 227 

less wilderness of cheap shops, factories, and 
dingy tenement houses, narrow streets thronged 
with roughly clad toilworn men and women, and 
with children whose only playground Is the dirty 
pavement. "How far that little candle throws 
his beams I " says Portia to Nerissa In The Mer- 
chant of Venice: "So shines a good deed In a 
naughty world." 

In thirty cities of this country musical settle- 
ments similar to this in New York exist. They 
are centers of light In places that would be dark 
indeed without them. They throw their beams 
afar, and draw not only the children but men and 
women of all ages, who In the midst of the sordid 
dullness of their lives feel a divine hunger In their 
souls. 

One Sunday morning, In the days of a former 
director, Mr. David Mannes, there appeared be- 
fore the school assembly a little group of medaled 
veterans representing a post of the G. A. R. 
They came to present the school with a flag. The 
bright emblem was unfurled; the audience, led 
by the school orchestra, sang The Star-spangled 
Banner. Mr. Mannes made a brief speech of 
acceptance. "Let us close,'' he said, "with the 
chorale, A Strong Fortress is our God. Then, 
with his baton raised he exclaimed: "This flag is 
the symbol of our Ideal of government, a govern- 
ment by the people, for the people. So must our 



228 Ideals of America 

ideal of music be a music by the people, for the 
people." 

It is not too much to say that the ideal thus 
proclaimed by Mr. Marines is the guiding star 
of a host of musicians and music-lovers in this 
country today. As the demand goes up from the 
professional for better education in music, an 
answer comes from the mass of the laity in a call 
for a richer education hy means of music, an edu- 
cation that will help to make more active those 
faculties that have a social value. The essential 
purpose of the national movement to extend the 
love of music among the people, and engage them 
in cooperation in its production and support, is 
not simply to afford them a means of entertain- 
ment of a better sort than the vulgar show in 
which multitudes of our people find their only 
recreation; that alone would be a worthy mo- 
tive, but it is not all. Music has one power which 
no other form of art expression possesses in equal 
measure, that of bringing a mass of people under 
the spell of a single uplifting emotion and thereby 
welding them together as a unit in the fellowship 
of a common experience. 

This two-fold result Is certainly the aim of 
those who have established free open-air or- 
chestral concerts In our cities. The effect of these 
concerts upon their untrained audiences Is of the 
most interesting character. The statements of 



Ideals in Music 229 

Mr. Arthur Farwell, former supervisor of Mu- 
nicipal Concerts in New York City, would apply 
as well to any other locality: "That these crowds 
get the greatest satisfaction from the greatest 
music on the programs there Is not the shadow 
of a doubt. It is the great works that sweep 
them out of themselves, exalt and rest them, and 
bring their being again Into harmonious relations 
with life after the toil and sordid struggle of 
their days. It is no longer the separate minds 
which listen, it is the over-soul of the mass. In 
the occurrence of this phenomenon the people re- 
ceive the essential nourishment that resides in the 
composer's inspiration, and receive the fullest 
revitalizing of soul which It is capable of bestow- 
ing. It Is for this spiritual resolvent and revital- 
Ization that the concerts are visited by the thou- 
sands who are to be found there day after day." ^ 
These efforts for civic betterment through 
music take various forms. The outdoor music In 
the parks and on the docks must be confined to a 
part of the year. How shall the ministry of music 
be continued In the cold season also ? Why should 
not the schoolhouses, "the only available club- 
houses for those who can afford no other," be 
utilized? Here and there an enlightened public 
opinion is forcing open the schoolhouses to larger 

1 Proceedings of the Music Teachers' National Association, 
1913: Municipal Music in Neiv York, Arthur Farwell. 



230 Ideals of America 

services than those for which they were originally 
designed; they are becoming social centers for 
the poor, with music as an ingredient in their in- 
vigorating atmosphere. 

The latest phase of this truly democratic move- 
ment Is found In the so-called " community 
chorus/' which, It is claimed, made Its first appear- 
ance in Rochester, N. Y., only a few years ago. 
At least the name had its origin there; the thing 
Itself might properly be called an expanded and 
glorified singing school, as known to our New 
England forbears, which in turn was the parent 
of the "musical convention" of quaint yet honor- 
able memory. The country singing school and 
the musical convention, being somewhat undis- 
ciplined and crude, were absorbed and lost in 
the specialized musical culture that came to us 
from Germany. But the desire, always latent 
among the people, to express their social feeling 
in song cannot long be repressed anywhere, and 
In these latter days we see It bursting forth once 
more. "The community chorus Idea," as It Is 
described by one of its leaders, "is a step In the 
social evolution of music beyond the traditional 
forms of choral organization. It convokes all 
the people, without discrimination or exception, 
and without regard to previous musical knowledge 
or training, to join together to sing. While a 
community chorus may and does give concerts, its 



Ideals in Music 231 

purpose Is not that of the usual choruses of the 
concert world." It does not " interpose any of 
the usual intellectual processes of musical educa- 
tion between the people and their singing. It 
deals with any and all of the people in the mass, 
and Its aim, while musical, is not so much artistic 
as social and spiritual." 

If this "community chorus" movement stood 
alone I should not be entirely confident that it 
would not prove a passing fad. But it does not 
stand alone. It is buttressed by the public school, 
the church, the women's clubs, the municipal 
musical enterprises, the dramatic movement, by 
the many tendencies in social life which find in 
the universal love of music a power which unifies 
at the same time that it Idealizes. Moreover, it 
Is allying itself with the "community center" 
movement, through which, as Dr. Luther Gulick 
states it, "neighborhood self-activity is being re- 
stored in city life, and community consciousness 
is being created in rural life." 

In all the manifestations I have cited of a new 
spirit at large in our country — the development 
of musical education In the public schools and 
colleges, the growth and waxing Infiuence of musi- 
cal clubs, the music school settlement, municipal 
concerts, the community orchestra and chorus — 
we have once more revealed that Irrepressible 
socializing power which, after all Is said of the 



232 Ideals of America 

glory of the works of the great masters, Is the 
chief title of honor which history bestows upon 
the art of tone. We students of the history of 
music look upon this musical movement among 
the people with mingled hope and apprehension. 
Will it continue to spread until all the waste 
places are visited; will it transform the life of our 
people? History, It is said, teaches that as ar- 
tistic professional music develops, the music of 
the people declines. So It has been, or so It 
seemed to be. But history has a way of varying 
her lessons, and loves to put historians to shame 
when they become over-confident in their general- 
izations. There are two kinds of music to which 
we may apply the term *' popular,'' viz. : the music 
that originates among the people, and music that 
comes to them from various sources and is 
adopted by them because it meets their wants. 

The popular music that diminishes with the 
growth of Individual creative and executive action 
Is the music that emanates from the common 
people — that branch of music which we call " folk 
song." This phase of music retains characteristics 
that testify to Its communal origin, and like the 
popular poetry It Is Inevitably supplanted by the 
specialized forms of Individual creation. We 
Americans never had a really national form of 
music, and the conditions that produce folk song 
will never exist here. In the musical countries of 



Ideals in Music 233 

Europe it is dying out. America will never be a 
musical country as England was a musical coun- 
try in the age of Elizabeth, as Austria was a musi- 
cal country in the eighteenth century. The term 
'' a musical nation," if it can ever be applied to us, 
will involve a new connotation, as signifying a 
country in which music has become a common in- 
stitution, accepted by the leaders of thought as an 
essential ingredient in education, employing its 
Intensifying power everywhere In the service of 
religion, of patriotism, of everything that helps 
to create a civic consciousness and add sweetness 
to the common life. 

There Is a group of enthusiasts who find In 
figures and statistics evidence that we are on the 
high road to becoming a musical nation. We are 
reminded of the prodigious increase In the num- 
ber of concerts, the multiplication of orchestras 
and choral societies, the enormous output of 
pianos and organs, the well-nigh universal use of 
mechanical piano players and phonographs on the 
part of those who can afford them, and, as a 
crowning testimony to the national love of music, 
we are told by a competent authority that the 
American people spend for music, musical Instru- 
ments, and musical Instruction over six hundred 
million dollars every year. The musical Inde- 
pendence of America is proclaimed as an Ideal 
and a rapidly realizing fact. The national musi- 



234 Ideals of America 

cal consciousness, we are told, Is so far awakened 
that the efforts of native composers and per- 
formers are receiving an encouragement hitherto 
refused, and the gratifying history of American 
painting promises to be repeated In the field of 
creative music. 

This chorus of self-gratulatlon Is met by an 
outcry of very shrill solo voices which assert that 
these signs of progress are fallacious, that the 
vast patronage of concerts on the part of the 
wealthier class has the same significance as the 
craze for the photo play on the part of the less 
opulent order, that only a very small proportion 
of those who buy concert and opera tickets re- 
ceive any lasting intellectual benefit. They tell 
us that the Increase in the extension of bad music 
Is greater than that of good music, that the one 
order of music which Immensely overtops every 
other in the quantity of sales Is the coarse, silly, 
inane "popular song.'* They see, or think they 
see, a progressive degeneration in the public taste, 
they group together all the shortcomings In our 
musical, literary, dramatic, and pictorial output, 
and declare with Mr. William Marion Reedy that 
these vulgar manifestations are the reflection of 
our national life In general, and believe with Mr. 
Percival Chubb that our whole system of educa- 
tion Is at fault In that It communicates no quick- 
ening sense of the poetry of life. 



Ideals in Music 235 

Wherever the balance of truth may lie, there 
is no question that we are in the midst of intense 
and unprecedented energies which express them- 
selves in literature, in music, in the drama, in 
architecture, and all the arts of design. Ameri- 
can life is determined to express itself vigorously 
in some way. The main question of interest is, 
in what way shall that be? Shall our art strive 
merely to show us life as the artist thinks he sees 
it, literally, elementally, photographically, or life 
as it strives to be when it is seized with the diviner 
impulses? Shall our art aspire, as Walter Pater 
says it should, towards the condition of music, or 
towards that of the naturalistic novel? How- 
ever we may answer these questions, in our 
coteries and In our newspaper contributions, we 
know that Art herself will have the final word, 
and that her decision will be shaped by mighty 
forces that are beyond our ken. I have tried to 
show the grounds of my belief that the forces that 
are operative In the music of this country are, on 
the whole, working for true progress. Evidences 
which I have not had time to give In detail plainly 
show that those who love music are taking it more 
and more seriously. They desire to know as 
well as to enjoy. The lecturer is almost as much 
encouraged as the star performer. The produc- 
tion of books on music and the circulation of the 
highest-class musical magazines are Increasing by 



236 Ideals of America 

leaps and bounds. I know that these educational 
influences I have described as yet reach only a 
fragment of our population, that multitudes in 
our congested cities and our scattered rural com- 
munities have no music In their lives, that whereas 
in earlier ages throughout the world every form 
of labor had Its song, today In our country the 
only sound heard in our factories Is the whir of 
machinery, and the husbandman catches no wel- 
come of Instruments and voices when he brings 
his harvest home. Yet the musical revival In this 
country Is real and genuine, as I have tried to 
show. A wise man judges a movement not by Its 
present accomplishment, but by its tendency. I 
draw hope from the recent musical development 
In this country because Its ruling spirit Is so 
largely educational; because It Is rapidly becom- 
ing organized and unified; because It Is coming 
daily under the control of men and women of cul- 
ture who believe with all their hearts In Its neces- 
sity and beneficent power. It Is, I verily believe, 
a force that will have an Influential place In the 
efforts that are In progress to build up a new and 
fairer democracy. 



X 

Ideals in Religion 



X 

IDEALS IN RELIGION 

By George Albert Cot, Professor of Religious Education, Union 
Theological Seminary, Neisj York 

IF YOU had asked an Athenian in the age of 
Pericles, *'What are the religious ideals of 
Athens?" he would have had not the slightest 
difficulty In replying. For Athens was the state, 
and the state maintained in the Eleuslnlan mys- 
teries an annual revival of religious consciousness. 
Here the youths who had reached an appropriate 
age gazed for the first time upon certain sacred 
objects and upon a solemn drama symbolical of 
the soul's progress, while from the lips of the 
hierophant fell Instruction concerning the Ideal 
meaning of life. 

When we endeavor to say what are the religious 
ideals of our own people, we are In no such 
happy situation. America is not the state. Amer- 
ica has no hall of sacred mysteries, no Initiation 
of its youth into an American conviction as to 
the destiny of man. There Is no American 
church, and there will be none. The spirit of 
America speaks in no creed, through no priestly 

239 



240 Ideals of America 

voice. It is, rather, a certain ethereal essence 
that thrills our souls when we meet one another 
simply as citizens. Of it we may say: 

Tliere Is no speech nor language; 

Its voice is not heard. 
Yet its line is gone out through all the earth, 

And its words to the end of the world. 

The audible voices of religion are not one, but 
many; we have not a church, but churches, and 
these are contrary, the one to the other. Possibly 
some future historian, free from all our biases, 
will see in our sectarianism a real unity, a spiritual 
division of labor. Let us hope that we shall yet 
discover that each of our sects is but laying a sep- 
arate stone in a single temple of the spirit. But 
to us of the present, trying to understand our- 
selves and to be true to ourselves, the ideals of our 
religious bodies are contradictory. Irreconcilable. 
Our America is the scene of a warfare of the 
spirit. 

I state this conclusion at the outset, in advance 
of the evidence, partly in order that the evidence 
may be the more sharply scrutlnizeci and partly 
in order that there may be no illusion as to what 
Is involved In our assumption that we are com- 
petent to scrutinize religious ideals. Are we sure 
that our present scrutinizing attitude does not 
already contradict some of the ideals that we are 
sure to meet? We are assuming, are we not, that 



Ideals in Religion 241 

the religious divisions of our populace are so 
many sects, each of which we regretfully see going 
on its own way. We desire that all of them shall 
discover some common or Inclusive principle, fol-» 
lowing which each may contribute to the unifica- 
tion of American purpose. If, Indeed, these sects 
would acknowledge themselves to be sects. If 
each one would seek to transcend Itself In some 
Inclusive truth or purpose. If ecclesiastical Insti- 
tutions understood themselves to be subject, as 
Individuals are, to the spiritual law that he who 
seeks to save his life loses It — then the search 
In which we are at this moment engaged might 
regard Itself as non-partisan and judicial. 

But what if our religious divisions should deny 
that they are sects? What If each one should 
say, *' I have already settled the question that you 
are ultimately interested In. The only possible 
basis for the unification of the spirit of America 
Is that which I prescribe?" Then, In truth, our 
condition would be that of spiritual warfare, and 
at once the problem would arise whether any 
genuine neutrality Is possible, whether we have 
not already taken an unneutral attitude by begin- 
ning this Inquiry. 

We who now agree to gaze upon the holy 
things of one another's faiths may well require of 
ourselves both high sincerity and absolute frank- 
ness with one another. This places upon me an 



242 Ideals of America 

obligation to confess that the spirit in which I 
survey our contemporary ideals permits me to 
doubt whether any religious group among us is 
more than a sect. I assume the liberty of ques- 
tioning whether any ecclesiastical body has com- 
mitted itself in word and act to any ideal that can 
possibly be the rallying center for the spiritual 
aspirations of all America. If, now, there be 
neighbors of mine who would declare against me 
any spiritual penalty for raising this question, who 
insist upon prescribing my conclusion in advance 
and regardless of what I can observe — I take 
them and their ideal, to be most sectarian of all, 
least capable of uniting our divided souls. 

Because I find ecclesiastical groups requiring 
of one another submission rather than mutual 
self-transcendence, because there are religious 
ideals that cannot incorporate into themselves the 
freedom that I am at this moment assuming, I am 
obliged to regard the spiritual life of America as 
a warfare. And because I must in this discussion 
assume unqualified freedom of religious inquiry, 
it has seemed to be the part of neighborly frank- 
ness to invite you to judge for yourselves whether 
this makes me also a sectary. Let me confess also 
without reservation that, as I gaze on the divi- 
siveness of our religious life, there moves within 
me what seems to be a religious spirit that is 
larger, more inclusive, than all fenced-in religion. 



Ideals in Religion 243 

I worship the God, not of a religious institution, 
not of a nation, not of a part of history but of 
the whole, the God who, breathing himself every- 
where into the human clod, makes it a spirit, a 
social craving, the spirit of humanity, the spirit 
of a possible world society. I bow my spirit be- 
fore the spirit of the world democracy that Is 
to be. 

How shall we know what are the ideals of our 
churches? Shall we go to their formulated creeds 
and confessions of faith? These symbols of faith 
were constructed for the most part in earlier gen- 
erations, before the problems of society could be 
seen In the perspective that Is inevitable to us. 
You will not find here the concepts that are cur- 
rent In our aspirations toward democracy. 

.... Lo, where his coming looms, 

Of earth's anarchic children latest born, 

Democracy, a Titan who hath learned 

To laugh at Jove's old-fashioned thunderbolts — 

Could he not also forge them, if he would? 

King by mere manhood, nor allowing aught 
Of holier unction than the sweat of toil ; 
In his own strength sufficient; called to solve, 
On the rough edges of society, ^ 
Problems long sacred to the choicer few, 
And improvise what elsewhere men receive 
As gifts of deity; tough foundling reared 
Where every man's his own Melchisedek, 
How make him reverent of a King of kings? 

— Lowell, The Cathedral. 



244 Ideals of America 

This Is a problem of religion that is simply 
unrecognized In the traditional forms of doctrine. 
We must look elsewhere If we wish to know what 
relation exists today between religious ideals and 
the Ideals of democratic society. On the other 
hand It should be remembered that creeds do not 
for the most part attempt to describe the good 
life. Rather, each creed represents a party vote 
on disputed questions of Scripture and of history. 
Hence It comes to pass that upon the lips of many 
Christians there are symbols of Christianity that 
say not a specific word about the love that Is the' 
fulfilling of the law. Not In these ancient sym- 
bols shall we find the ideals by which men live. 

Is the meaning of religion In modern life re- 
vealed, then. In the Intermittent geysers called 
revivals? To some extent It Is. A great popular 
revival Is a holiday of the spirit, a temporary re- 
lease from the dullness of the economic grind. 
Here springs of tears and of laughter that have 
been going dry are unsealed. Here for the mo- 
ment the individual mind, melted into a mass 
consciousness, basks In the freedom of irrespon- 
sibility. By these processes, many a man Is re- 
leased from the Iron bands of evil habits. Here, 
helped by social stimulus, men acquire moral cour- 
age and momentum. Loyalties of no mean quality 
displace for a time, frequently for a lifetime, the 
petty will that had developed in the Individual's 



Ideals in Religion 245 

narrow round. Common morality and traditional 
conceptions of religious duty are uniformly 
preached in revivals. But if we ask revivalism 
to show us what is to be done with the tremen- 
dous social and anti-social forces that swirl around 
us, its voice grows feeble. If we ask it how 
America shall attain to the spiritual wholeness 
toward which she strives to lift her eyes, revival- 
ism becomes dumb. 

There are three sources of information as to 
religious ideals, however, upon which, in con- 
junction, we may rely with some confidence, 
namely: The expenditures of religious bodies, the 
content and method of religious education, and 
declarations of religious bodies when they are 
confronted with the social problems of the day. 

Let us begin with expenditures — for where 
your heart is, there will your treasure be also ! 
Here we come upon some things that are common 
to all the faiths. Religion means to all our people, 
among other things, regard for those who are in 
sickness and distress. However numerous and 
deep our differences may be, the Good Samaritan 
has our unanimous franchise. Expenditures for 
education indicate another tenet of all American 
religion. Every child of God must have oppor- 
tunity for mental growth. A third and vast item 
of expenditure is that for the maintenance of wor- 
ship. Costly worship is practiced by all religious 



246 Ideals of America 

bodies, but the types differ so much that no single 
or brief statement of the ideals that are here 
seeking utterance can be adequate. 

Some notion of the largeness of life, and of its 
weakness; some acknowledgment of the majesty 
of duty, and of human frailty; some hope of a 
social future greater and better than the present; 
some feeling of a divine presence in these convic- 
tions of largeness and majesty and progress — 
these things, all looking toward ideals, are always 
present. But what contribution is being made by 
public worship to the spiritual unity of America 
or of the world? To enter some of our sanc- 
tuaries is to withdraw for the time being from 
America, struggling to become a soul, and to 
spend an hour in agreeable apartness. The por- 
tals of some of our temples swing between a vast 
and seething present, full of unsolved problems, 
and a reposeful past, which in magnificent attire 
ever celebrates anew its own complete self-suffi- 
ciency. Yet here and there prophetic Individuals, 
having caught glimpses of God precisely in Amer- 
icans bewilderment about her own soul, cause the 
experience of worship, through prayer and ser- 
mon, to become a consecration to the great Spirit 
of Unity. 

Still other vast sums are devoted to missions at 
home and abroad. What ideals does this expend- 
iture represent? Mixed ideals, undoubtedly. 



Ideals in Religion M7 

The sentiment of pity, obedience to a command 
of Jesus, loyalty to a denominational enterprise, 
desire to extend one's own ecclesiastical organiza- 
tion — all these are here. But something more is 
here, something exceedingly vital. The modern 
foreign missionary movement started out as an 
effort to rescue Individuals from sin by preaching; 
it Is transforming itself into cooperation with the 
socially constructive forces of other peoples to the 
end that the level of whole civilizations may be 
raised. Educative processes that form social 
standards are becoming basal in missionary strat- 
egy. Moreover, the original intent to add new 
members to our own respective ecclesiastical 
bodies is being converted Into the policy of trans- 
ferring the control of native churches as rapidly 
as possible to the natives themselves, and of unit- 
ing in these churches the various denominational 
groups, even though we remain separate In our 
own land. 

Finally, the home base Is undergoing recon- 
struction. Many of us can remember a time when 
foreign missions were an affair of ministers who 
extracted money from laymen by occasional ap- 
peals to their emotions. Then came a period when 
laymen began to study missions. As a result, a 
local society here and there assumed the support 
of a missionary. Finally, we see the laymen of 
today meeting In great assemblies to consider the 



248 Ideals of America 

world situation under the assumption that the 
problem of a world religion is their affair. The 
enlargement of social horizon that is coming — 
that has already come — through this movement 
is a notable fact. Laymen are actually beginning 
to think of their religion, even of their personal 
religious life, in terms of a possible world so- 
ciety. After full reckoning has been made of 
ecclesiastical divisions and ambitions in mission 
work and of mixed motives everywhere, the mis- 
sionary enterprise of today must be recognized as 
a tremendous expansion and deepening of social 
ideals. 

A source of information more trustworthy 
even than ecclesiastical expenditures is religious 
education. For when we teach the young, we dis- 
criminate between what we are and what our ideal 
is. Education never says to children " Be what 
we are," but " Be better than we are." Here we 
criticize ourselves and pay something for prevent- 
ing in future generations the faults of our own. 
This is our most practical idealism. Tell me what 
and how you teach the children, and I will tell 
you to what ideals you are really awake. 

What, then, are the churches teaching their 
children? All of the churches, to begin with, are 
teaching common morality. By this I mean both 
the "do nots" of the Ten Commandments and 
also the "do" principle of merciful kindness. 



Ideals in Religion 249 

Through the constant inculcation of these prin- 
ciples among more than fifteen millions of the 
population, mostly children and youth, the Sun- 
day schools and other church schools have become 
a moral bulwark of incalculable significance. The 
public school, when it instructs and trains its pupils 
in morals, relies upon the open, continuous stand- 
ard-setting done by the religious bodies. Imagine 
the plight of the public-school teachers if they 
could not rely upon such educational support. 
Think what it would mean if the state should 
suddenly find itself the only institution whereby 
society introduces children to the moral wisdom 
of the race, the only one that sets about awaken- 
ing the heart of the child, out of which are the 
issues of social life! The American system of 
education is not identical with the public schools. 
Our system includes the public schools and the 
churches as complementary, mutually supporting 
parts. 

In the social ideals that control religious edu- 
cation unanimity will be found at one point at 
least. All religious bodies stand for the integrity 
of the monogamous family. But beyond this 
there Is variation, and there is likewise much un- 
certainty. To say merely that common morality 
is inculcated leaves the story of ideals less than 
half told. For one and the same moral command 
may represent contradictory ideals. "Thou shalt 



25<^ Ideals of America 

not steal" is actually made to mean in our pres- 
ent life either " Hold as sacred the present law 
of private property" or "Revise this law funda- 
mentally in the interest of humanity." "Thou 
shalt not kill " may mean either " Refrain from 
murder in the common-law sense," or "Take the 
commercial profit out of everything that depresses 
human vitality by accidents, disease, or over- 
work." "Love of neighbor" may mean either 
relieving distress, or removing the causes of dis- 
tress, or the democracy of equal opportunity as 
against special privilege. Therefore we must dis- 
criminate between the different social ideals that 
control religious education here and there. 

The extraordinary revival of religious educa- 
tion in orthodox Judaism is Inspired by an ideal 
of racial solidarity. To keep the blood pure, to 
perpetuate ancient ceremonies, to keep alive mem- 
ories that separate this people from all others — 
this Is fundamental. Therefore Instruction in the 
Hebrew tongue Is prominent, and marvelously 
effective methods for teaching It to American 
children have been worked out. Here, then, is 
the ideal of a permanent cleavage In the social 
consciousness of America. Liberal Judaism, on 
the other hand, emphasizing the social ideals of 
the great prophets of the race, shows in varying 
degrees a tendency to transcend the things that 
separate Jews from their fellow-citizens. 



Ideals in Religion 251 

Religious education in the Catholic Church is 
a closely articulated system that follows with un- 
wavering fidelity certain thoroughly conscious 
ideals. Moral conduct is rigidly insisted upon, 
and much definite training is provided. But this 
is not all. Through every item there runs a 
thread that suspends the whole upon a particular 
view of social law. Moral conduct is obedience. 
It is prescribed by authority. Without any am- 
biguity whatever, Catholic education supports law 
and order. It does so with the greatest natural- 
ness because this great Church conceives itself, in 
all its spiritual labors, as the authoritative admin- 
istrator of fixed divine commands. To revert to 
an Aristotelian conception, the Church is the 
" form " and moving principle, while men are 
"matter" which is to receive impetus, direction, 
and particular quality from this "form." The 
authority of the Church depends not a whit upon 
the suffrage of Its members. 

Consider, now^ that this authority Includes 
morals as well as faith. Two things follow: 
First, the public school cannot be competent to 
teach morals, because it does not recognize the 
one authority that, as Catholics believe, is com- 
petent to say what Is right and what wrong. 
Second, Catholics must oppose every social theory 
that seems to make men themselves the source of 
law. Hence Catholicism's Implacable antagonism 



252 Ideals of America 

to socialism. Catholic religious education with- 
out doubt tends to forestall social discontent not 
only of the impulsive sort but also of the reflec- 
tive sort as far as it is inspired by any non-con- 
formist ethical feeling. 

The only ethical unity of America that Cath- 
olicism will at all consider, therefore, depends 
upon accepting the Catholic interpretation of 
authority in religion and morals. This great his- 
toric institution sees no hope for our moral dis- 
tractions, our divided purposes, short of the 
extension of the Church itself until it becomes the 
one and only church of us all. This is her ideal 
America. She cannot participate in our public 
schools whole-heartedly, but only partially and as 
a temporary accommodation to a system that she 
regards as fundamentally wrong. She cannot 
identify herself whole-heartedly with any humani- 
tarian reconstruction of the ethical bases of law, 
for she regards her authority in the moral sphere 
as exclusive. 

There are Protestant bodies also, or at least 
parties, that with varying degrees of insistence 
teach their children to think that the spiritual 
unity of America is possible only through en- 
trance into one particular sheepfold. Their 
church is "the" church; all others are "sects" or 
"denominations." Or, their creed is a finality to 
which all must ultimately bow. Partly by open 



Ideals in Religion 253 

speech, but more largely by silent assumption, 
dogma still separates good men. Still the ancient 
art of slaying men by words is practiced among us. 
Yet on the whole it may be claimed that our man- 
ners are improving. They are improving partly 
because scholarship applied to ancient dogmas 
has shown how largely they are reflections of his- 
toric periods and incidents. But our manners are 
improving also because larger and finer social 
ideals are coming to be incorporated into theo- 
logical presuppositions. 

It is noticeable that ecclesiasticisms of the ex- 
clusive types tend to set off the sacred from the 
secular, giving religion a sphere peculiar to itself 
and thus saving it from excessive contact with the 
jarring ideals of society at large. I do not see 
how any exclusive eccleslasticism can do other- 
wise. In an era of science one must not be In- 
fallible in too many things, and when laws depend 
upon the votes of the whole people, a particular 
church must not prescribe too much. But this 
results in the following paradoxical situation : 
Logically considered, every act of legislation is 
subject to an ethical test. In numberless cases 
ethical motives are actually appealed to on behalf 
of, or In opposition to, a proposed law. This is 
true not only of laws that relate to vice and crime, 
but also to those that concern the social welfare, 
to say nothing of the fundamental rights of man. 



254 Ideals of America 

There Is not an item In the law of contracts, there 
is not a business custom, that does not involve the 
ultimate question of the value of human life and 
the proper relations between man and man as 
persons. If I mistake not, some consciousness 
that this Is so has begun to pervade the populace, 
and the masses are already seeking for a com- 
prehensive principle and motive for social organi- 
zation. But It must be pointed out that the re- 
ligious bodies that most insist upon the possession 
of exclusive or unique authority for themselves 
or for their dogmas are the ones that have the 
least quarrel with the bisection of life into secular 
and sacred. 

But Protestantism, in most of its bodies at 
least, reveals the presence of a contrary tendency. 
Most of the Sunday schools say to their children, 
" Here are Indeed revealed truths that must surely 
be believed, but listen for God in your own heart, 
and then live from within outward." Now this 
emphasis upon having a right heart brings these 
Protestants Into a peculiar relation to social agita- 
tions that proceed from the good heart. On the 
one hand, some of the leaders, holding that social 
service and social reconstruction are not religion, 
have insisted that the old slogan, " Get right with 
God," is sufficient for the church. But other 
leaders, pointing out that Jesus made love to God 
and love to men a singk principle, have replied 



Ideals in Religion 255 



that there Is no way to get right with God except 
through active love, and that, consequently, the 
reconstruction of society into a brotherhood is 
the process of salvation. 

Thus it comes to pass that the missionary mo- 
tive with its world outlook has begun to fuse with 
the brotherhood-motive of our most daring 
humanitarianism. This fusion Is already express- 
ing itself In the Laymen's Missionary Movement 
and in the religious instruction of children. Not, 
perhaps, with the consistency of a fully matured 
policy, but yet with the Inevitability of a life 
process, the new courses of lessons for Protestant 
Sunday schools have begun to focus life's Ideals 
around the conception of a world brotherhood. 
Furthermore, the new methods of religious edu- 
cation Include with entire definiteness the training 
of children In missions and social service as a 
single program. 

What Is the reaction of ecclesiastical assem- 
blies when they face the problems of our distracted 
society? Do these assemblies use the dialect of 
a privileged or Inert social class, or the intel- 
ligible speech of a genuine world brotherhood? 
As In the case of missions, so here ecclesiasticism 
cannot yet be said to have realized clearly that it 
must lose Its life If it Is to gain the world life 
toward which It aspires. Missions plus remedial 
philanthropy may be taken for granted; but social 



256 Ideals of America 

reconstruction both at home and in mission fields 
cannot as yet. Nevertheless the acknowledged 
motive of brotherhood has already produced some 
remarkable utterances concerning current social 
problems. For example, the Federal Council of 
Churches has united upon a "Social Creed" that 
faces in the spirit of brotherhood a rather remark- 
able catalogue of our social conflicts. This con- 
fession of faith, taken in connection with parallel 
declarations by various denominational assem- 
blies, makes it impossible to accept the assertion 
that is sometimes made that the churches are so 
many fortresses of social conservatism. 

What would happen to our economic and polit- 
ical system if the spirit of brotherly love for all 
mankind should get control of It? The answer 
to this question will reveal the latent radicalism 
— and not altogether latent — that is In Protestant 
Christianity. There is, In fact, a large and In- 
creasing number of men and women whose re- 
ligious convictions require the testing of every 
social regulation and custom by this question: 
" Does It build up the life of all the men and 
women and children concerned?" Alongside the 
fiscal balance sheet, there is demanded a human 
balance sheet that shall show the health and hap- 
piness and possibilities of character that go into 
Industry and that come out of it. The clearer 
thinkers in Protestantism have seen that to be 



Ideals in Religion 257 



Christians they must insist that business become 
organized love. To this end they intend as far as 
in them lies to organize men of good will into a 
brotherhood that shall get control of law and 
administration and the natural resources of the 
earth. These persons, and their number is grow- 
ing, have the radicalism of those who are con- 
scious of themselves as instruments of the loving 
will of God. 

Call this fantastic if you will. Say that men 
cannot love one another to any such extent. Say 
that men have individual rights or vested Interests 
that they will never surrender. Nevertheless the 
fact remains that, with fresh and enlarged appli- 
cation, multitudes of men believe with Intensity 
that "God is love," and that the law for our life, 
a law that must be put Into all laws and institu- 
tions, is, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
self." 

Do any of our religious Ideals contain healing 
for the terrible fever through which the world 
has been passing? Religion that had sup- 
posed Itself to be a monotheism of universal 
human significance turned out, when the tide of 
war swept over the world, to be a collection of 
national religions, each with Its own god of war. 
The subservience of religion to nationalism that 
we have witnessed has brought to light the social 
limitations of the ante helium faith. With their 



258 Ideals of America 

lips men had spoken of divine love and of human 
brotherhood; but men had not counted the cost 
of brotherhood, nor made their industrial institu- 
tions into instruments of brotherhood, nor trained 
their own spirits steadily to think of national 
boundaries or of diplomacy as so many opportu- 
nities for brotherly love. Brotherhood was a 
sentiment, a hope, an ethical fragrance; but the 
hand upon the throttle of the social engine of 
steel was not the right hand of fellowship. 

Has American religion anything better to 
offer? We have pious desires for world peace, 
and for the permanent cessation of war. But 
how do our prayers differ from those of the other 
belligerents, all of whom desire peace? Wherein 
is our religion any more of a guarantee of world 
brotherhood than theirs? Who are our brothers? 
Religiously considered, what are national boun- 
daries? What constitutes national honor or vital 
interest, religiously considered? 

As one listens to those who stand forth as 
spokesmen for God, one discerns that there is 
unanimous approval of the ideal of universal 
peace. " Surely," they all say, " the land of world 
peace floweth with milk and honey." But here 
the voices become confused. Most of them ap- 
pear to be saying, "We are not able to go up 
against national selfishness and national self-will, 
those great giants, the sons of Anak. The land 



Ideals in Religion 259 

which we have been spying out is a land that 
eateth up the inhabitants thereof, and all the 
people that we saw in it are men of great stature; 
we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so 
we were in their sight." And one saith to an- 
other, " Let us make a captain, and let us return 
into Egypt." But a few of the forth-speakers for 
God use a different tone. " Let us go up at once," 
they say, '' for we are well able to overcome. 
Fear not the people of the land. If only God 
delight In us, the God of the world brotherhood, 
he will bring us Into the land of world peace, and 
give It unto us." Thus speak the few. But the 
congregation bids stone them with stones. 



XI 
Ideals in Philosophy 



XI 

IDEALS IN PHILOSOPHY 

By Harry Allen Overstrect, Professor of Philosophy 
College of the City of New York 

AS a graduate student, I remember that 
whenever I chanced to ask a question in 
metaphysics of my great teacher, the Master of 
Balliol, the answer came always prompt and de- 
cisive. If I chanced to ask that same question two 
months later, the answer again came prompt and 
decisive, and in practically identical terms. I 
came, after a time, to feel that there were no 
doubtful places in the Master's philosophy. Al- 
though it was a philosophy cosmic in its outreach, 
the Master was equally at home in every part of 
its vast domain. It gave me, as a student, a 
peculiarly dizzy sense of the power to which a 
human mind could attain. To hobnob thus with 
the Cosmic Absolute and pass on authentic news 
about him to college boys — it was achievement 
rare and wonderful ! 

I question whether any American students of 
the present generation have the same experience 
with their teachers of philosophy. If they ask 

263 



264 Ideals of America 

of them a question In metaphysics, the answer is 
most likely to come with hems and haws; and if 
they ask the same question two months later, the 
answer. In all probability, comes with quite differ- 
ent hems and haws. American philosophers of 
today, apparently, are altogether in doubt. And 
as for being at home In their philosophic empire, 
they act far more like uncomfortable beings who 
are trying, with some desperate embarrassment, 
to discover just where in the whole blessed world 
they really are. 

Has philosophy lost its way in the world? Is 
the day of Its calm lordship of life gone by? Or 
Is philosophy finding for Itself a new way? Is it 
on the road to a still more splendid lordship? 

To the philosopher of the closet, who looks at 
philosophy simply in terms of philosophy Itself, 
there are Indeed many things that bring concern 
in the present state of philosophic thought — Its 
unfinallty. Its limited outreach, its unwillingness to 
take the old confident flights. Its shyness of the 
Cosmos and the Absolute, its humble self-dis- 
paragement. To the philosopher of the out-of- 
doors, on the other hand, who measures his phi- 
losophy In terms of his experiential world, these 
characteristics of present-day philosophy bring 
not concern but rejoicing. To him they are the 
sign that philosophy Is still vital ; that It still draws 
Its sustenance from the common life; that it lives 



Ideals in Philosophy 265 

and moves with the life and movement of that 
common existence. For to the philosopher of the 
out-of-doors these characteristics of the philo- 
sophic thought of today — its tentativeness, its 
experimentalism, its suspicion of absolute truth 
— are characteristics of the life of today and 
show philosophy to be very near indeed to the 
spirit of its time. 

It may seem to some, however, that this is in- 
deed a queer kind of compliment to pay to philo- 
sophic thought — that it has changed with the 
times. What is philosophy if not the contempla- 
tion of the eternal verities? And what are the 
eternal verities if not eternal? A philosophy 
that changes its substance with the times must 
indeed be a queer sort of philosophy, a sort 
of presto-change philosophy, not a rock-bottom 
philosophy worth planting one's feet upon with 
firm assurance that it will not give way. 

But here is precisely the significant thing about 
typical present-day philosophy. It actually prides 
itself upon the fact that it is not any longer a 
rock-bottom structure of truth. It doesn't believe 
in rock-bottom structures of truth. It rather pre- 
fers to picture itself as out on vast and precarious 
adventure — on rolling billows, amid veering 
winds, adventuring for some far-distant, unknown 
America. 

What shall we make of all this? What Is 



266 Ideals of America 

philosophy of today driving at anyway? What is 
its job? What is its intent? And what are that 
job and that intent worth? 

Those of my hearers who studied their philos- 
ophy in the eighties and nineties will remember 
that in those years philosophy in America was 
triumphantly German. No course in philosophy 
was complete, in the first place, or really amounted 
to anything without a study of Kant. And as 
one studied Kant, one was reminded by one's in- 
structors continually that an even greater was 
still to come. In most cases one didn't reach the 
greater one. Kant was a big enough job in him- 
self, and most of us were piled ignominiously upon 
the battle field long before we had got anywhere 
near to grips even with the Transcendental Aes- 
thetic. But always there were the awed whisper- 
ings, the hushed allusions to the greater one, the 
world-compelling Hegel. Hegel was the Master; 
Hegel — with Fichte and Schelling as initiatory 
torch-bearers — was the Truth. 

Hegel, as we learned, was himself very scorn- 
ful of Kant and made unmerciful sport of the 
little old Koenigsberger's thin company of Dinge- 
an-Sich, and of his rather naive dialectic. But on 
the whole, when we came to look clearly into 
Hegel himself, we found him to be not so very far 
different from his great forerunner. Both, we 



Ideals in Philosophy 267 

found, were philosophical optimists. Both be- 
lieved that the problem of human existence could 
be made a relatively simple one, If the human 
mind would but submit itself to a true methodol- 
ogy. For Kant, that true methodology consisted, 
on the one hand, in a humble recognition of the 
limited, tentative character of scientific reason, 
and on the other, In a triumphant and soul-satis- 
fying recognition of the unlimited, final character 
of moral reason. Through that moral reason, 
Kant got, or believed he got, his grip on the three 
great realities, God, Freedom, and Immortality. 

So the world for Kant was a good world. God 
was in his heaven, looking after the Dinge-an- 
Sick; and all was very right with the world. The 
human soul was free, and its destiny was to be 
dutifully happy in perpetuiim. 

Hegel, to be sure, had no use for Kant's meth- 
odology, for his division of the reason into scien- 
tific and moral, pure and practical. But Hegel 
believed with Kant that reason, If It were but the 
right kind of reason, could reach the truth of 
things. Reason could think itself through to the 
heart of reality. The reality that Hegel reached 
by his mind-shattering dialectic, or believed him- 
self to have reached, was a world absolute in 
spirit, a world eternally perfect, and yet a world 
which, in its time aspect, was realizing itself 
through progressive stages of evolution. Hegel 



268 Ideals of America 

thus was an evolutionary optimist. God, the Ab- 
solute, was in his heaven; and all was eternally 
coming to be right with the world! 

These were the philosophies that dominated 
our lives in the eighties and nineties. They were 
thoroughly conventional philosophies. They 
seemed, to be sure, to be something very rare and 
out of the ordinary. Their jargon was like to 
nothing that we could remember and their 
thoughts seemed desperately hard to master. But 
after all was said and done and the smoke of 
battle was cleared away, it came to little more 
than this, that those tough old German philos- 
ophers approved our long-standing conventional 
thoughts — our thoughts about religion, about 
morals, about politics, about sex relations, about 
business. In short, they approved our long- 
standing conventional Christian optimism. Above 
all, they confirmed us in our customary view that 
if people would only think things through, if they 
would only seek for the truth and get that truth 
stated, everything would be fine and noble. 

It is significant now to remember that the 
eighties and ninties were, in our country, the days 
of agriculture and small business. Big business 
was indeed beginning to rear Its head, but we were 
not yet quite aware of It. We were a nation of 
farmers and small tradesmen, with the typical out- 
look of farmers and small tradesmen. 



Ideals in Philosophy 269 

Now it is just that outlook which is interesting 
here. Farmers and small tradesmen lead a re- 
latively quiet life. There is no great fume and 
fret about them, no helter-skelter rush, no wild 
expectancy or thrilling adventure. Among such 
folk, life goes on from day to day very much as 
it always has. The season comes round and the 
plow must be hauled out of its corner. The time 
comes for marbles and for summer hats; and in 
the small store, a letter is carefully indited order- 
ing the new stock. Farmers and small tradesmen 
make no big demands on life. They have no 
heaven-scaling ambitions, no fiery discontents. 
Periodically, a faithful and uncomplaining wife 
presents a new offspring to an equally faithful but 
not always uncomplaining husband, who forth- 
with mends the baby buggy for another season's 
run. On Sunday, the family repairs to its par- 
ticular church and offers up thanksgiving in its 
particular way to a God that giveth all. And on 
Monday the farmer swaps horses and the grocer 
sands the sugar. A quiet, complacent, unadven- 
turous life, with no great evils to be fought save 
the two monstrous evils of the flesh, whiskey and 
sex immorality. 

For such life the great outlines of reality were 
fixed and secure. Things, in the main, were right. 
Individuals indeed went wrong sometimes and had 
to be set in order — the church and the jail were 



270 Ideals of America 

there for that purpose. But on the whole, things 
were as they should be — things political, things 
economic, things social, and things religious. 

It was somewhere in the nineties that little 
clouds began to show themselves in the blue of 
our complacent heavens. One heard of dishonest 
uses of public moneys — "graft," it came to be 
called. Some very ugly minded persons began to 
print ugly tales in ugly magazines. We were told 
things about aldermen and bosses. And then the 
stories began to creep in about congressmen, even 
about those noblest Romans of them all, United 
States senators. And then the stories dared even 
to besmirch our judges, the most sacredly inviolate 
of all beings in our commonwealth. 

We refused to listen, and yet the stories some- 
how got beneath the skin of us. At the same 
time, another annoyance was coming into our quiet 
life. As we plowed our fields, as we sold our 
calicos, there sounded in our ears a low growl 
from over the country. " Unions," we muttered, 
" the unions are making trouble." Then, In a 
big city, someone threw a bomb and killed some 
policemen, and we swore that the blackguard and 
all his crew should be hanged. We hanged them 
and returned to our plowing and our selling of 
calicos. But the growl grew louder. Then there 
were shots and cries of the wounded; windows 



Ideals in Philosophy 271 

smashed, factories burned. And we sent the 
militia to shoot down the dogs. And when the 
militia couldn't do it, we sent federal troops. 

It was all very annoying. When we came to 
church on Sunday, a dodger would be thrust into 
our hands, bidding us to stand by the strikers, 
to stand for decent living wages, and decent con- 
ditions of work. We got very angry and tore the 
dodger to bits. And then we composed ourselves 
and went In and told God how we hadn't been 
drunk or done that other unmentionable thing, 
and that we hoped he'd let us go to heaven when 
our time came. 

I need not pursue the matter In detail. I want 
simply to emphasize how radically our life has 
changed from the life of those complacent eighties 
and early nineties. Today we cry for peace and 
there Is no peace — no peace In business, no peace 
in politics, no peace In religion, no peace between 
the nations. We are torn and shattered. Great 
doubts assail us. Great perplexities stagger and 
dumfound us. While we w^ere living our quiet 
lives, great forces, forces of good and forces of 
evil, were growing up among us — big business, 
big cities, big politics, big science, big adventures. 
We suddenly found ourselves In a new world, a 
world for which we hadn't prepared ourselves 
and which we didn't know quite how to handle. 

We stopped reading our Kant and our Hegel. 



272 Ideals of America 

Somehow they didn't seem to apply. We began 
to tackle things right and left. We got inter- 
ested in political reform, in trade unionism, in 
socialism, in sweatshop work and child labor, in 
criminality and prostitution, in bad housing and 
parkless streets, in imbecile children and un- 
healthy parents. We got interested in Rocke- 
feller and Harriman and Gould and Morgan. 
We got interested in Wall Street. We got inter- 
ested In the Supreme Court. 

And when we stopped to take breath, lo, the 
old philosophy was gone and a new one — new 
ones — had grown up in its stead. 

As we look now at the new philosophies born in 
America since the nineties, we discover that the 
spirit of them was the spirit of the new America, 
the America that was outgrowing her youth of 
complacent self-conceit, the America that was 
learning sad and ofttimes tragic truths about her- 
self, the America that was slowly finding herself 
face to face with new and vastly perplexing human 
problems. It was the spirit, in short, of self- 
criticism, the spirit impatient of easy optimisms, 
grim to confront real difficulties, frank to accept 
the human world not as all planned and perfect, 
but as one where the tragedy of defeat was real 
and where there was need for the strong arm and 
the strong heart of loyal help. The characteristic. 



Ideals in Philosophy 273 

you will remember, of pragmatism — the first phi- 
losophic child of the new American spirit — was 
its biting scorn of absolutism's "block universe," 
that finished futiHty of German philosophy; that 
beatific world beyond good because beyond real 
evil. Pragmatism threw out the challenge of an 
awakened America: the world is not all good; 
the world is hugely bad. God's not in his heaven; 
the devil disputes his throne. Optimism is pap 
for babes. The strong man is he who looks his 
world in the face and sees it as a world of vast 
and perilous adventure, a world where all man- 
ner of forces contend, a world that may go to 
smash for all that we can tell, a world, therefore, 
that calls for one's help to win against the forces 
of darkness. Not optimism, but an adventurous 
meliorism — a world to be made better by fight- 
ing for it, not a world to be accepted as already 
the best of all possible worlds. 

With this defiance of the complacent absolut- 
isms went another defiance. Truth — how was 
truth to be found? For the absolutist, truth was 
there. Truth was eternal. Truth was something 
to be discovered, a content already in place in the 
high heavens, that somehow was to be appro- 
priated. If people would but think hard enough 
they would reach it. Thus the absolutisms laid 
greatest stress upon thinking, and so upon the 
purely logical disciplines and activities. 



274 Ideals of America 

Pragmatism, disavowing the whole absolutlstic 
block conception of a universe finished and per- 
fect, believing instead that the universe is an ad- 
venturous universe, unfinished, whirling along, 
muddling along, fighting along, striking out Into 
this line, now into that, had no use for Truth with 
a capital T, Truth that is already there, eternally 
real, all boxed up and ready for delivery. Truth 
was something In process of creation. Tomor- 
row there would be more truth than today; and no 
one could tell what radically different truth there 
might not be In a thousand aeons. Truth was not 
a something to discover and appropriate; truth 
was something to create. The truth-getting 
process was a trying-it-on process. The act that 
fitted, the project that succeeded, the line of direc- 
tion that could carry Itself out — that was truth. 
Truth In short was a dynamic thing, a thing of 
action. And so, just as In the absolutisms the 
stress was laid upon thought, In pragmatism the 
stress was laid upon action. The one type of 
philosophy was Intellectualistic; the other volun- 
tarlstlc. 

There was another outcome still. For the ab- 
solutisms, reality. In Its proper nature, was not 
this changing world of appearance. Reality was 
the changeless, the eternal. Time, therefore, was 
a category of lower Import. Time, somehow, 
and all that was In time, were relatively unreal, 



Ideals in Philosophy 275 



of lesser Import and value. For pragmatism, on 
the contrary, with its denial of absolutes, it was 
precisely the eternal that was the untrue category. 
Time, and all that was in time — these were the 
real; these were the only sources of authentic 
values. While absolutism in short was eter- 
nalistic, pragmatism, by its very nature and inter- 
est, was aggressively temporalistic. 

It will be interesting at this point to note the 
parallel between this pragmatic way of thinking 
in philosophy and a way of thinking that was al- 
ready manifesting itself with increasing vigor in 
the social and political world. The Fathers of 
the Nation had written out for themselves in 
their national constitution what to them was prac- 
tically an absolute formulation of Political Truth. 
For decades Americans had regarded that formu- 
lation with supreme reverence, reciting its doctrine 
of rights and its theory of the functions of gov- 
ernment as something beyond the mutations of 
time. Indeed so perfect did they conceive this 
formulation of Political Truth to be that they 
firmly believed that if other nations would but 
take their constitution over bodily the social and 
political millenium would be at hand. But in the 
late nineties, Americans were beginning to be very 
doubtful about their revered Constitution. One 
experience after another led them to see in how 
great measure the supposedly Absolute Truth em- 



276 Ideals of America 

bodied in the Constitution was but the truth of a 
specific and very much limited period in the na- 
tion's life. They began to see that one must be 
very suspicious of any fixed and final setting forth 
of political truth, that political truth in short is 
created in the very process of a nation's growth. 
Moreover they began to see that political truth 
is not to be discovered by thinking it out a priori, 
deducing it from some high and holy principles of 
human " rights," but that it is to be found by con- 
stant, patient experimentation, experimentation in 
which the institution or the law which " succeeds," 
which " fits " the specific situation, is the institu- 
tion or the law which is, for that situation, true. 
Americans, in short, under stress of their national 
difficulties, were quite unconsciously and yet with 
growing conviction, changing from the political 
absolutism of the first century of their national 
life to political pragmatism. And I think it will 
not be denied, when I say that such pragmatism 
in political thinking is the characteristic note of 
present-day American life. 

I pass now to another equally significant though 
somewhat more difficult aspect of philosophic 
pragmatism. William James startled American 
philosophers some years ago by asking the 
apparently silly question, " Does consciousness 
exist?" I remember that, at the time, I was still 
in the growing-up stage in philosophy; and that 



Ideals in Philosophy 277 

when I saw the question, I snorted and cast the 
article which made pretense to answer the ques- 
tion aside. But, curiously enough, despite my ex- 
ceedingly disapproving snort, the question stayed. 
And indeed, not only has American philosophy 
not been able to cast the question aside, but I 
think I am correct in saying that In the most 
trusted quarters of American philosophy, the an- 
swer Is now given as James gave It: " Conscious- 
ness does not exist." 

I am well aware that such a statement will 
make the layman gasp; or perhaps better. It will 
cause him to renew his conviction that, as all 
philosophers are fools anyhow. It doesn't much 
matter what they say. But this time let the lay- 
man not be so sure. James was asking a big ques- 
tion and was answering It In a big way. His 
answer. In all Its deeper significance, marked prac- 
tically a revolution, not only in our philosophical, 
but In our social, our economic, our moral, and 
our religious thinking. Simply to illustrate, let 
me take the last. Religion, for most of the past 
centuries, had been a thing von ohen herah. There 
was supposed to be a higher order of being — the 
spiritual — which somehow ruled over our lowly 
bodily life, gave It Its purport and direction, 
handed down Its laws and their penalties. Re- 
ligion was reverence for this higher, non-bodily 
order of being. Not only, however, was there 



278 Ideals of America 

above human life such a non-bodily order of being, 
but human life was itself in part non-bodily. 
Human life was split in two; it was body and it 
was soul. And at death, the thinking part would 
bid a fond but grateful farewell to the bodily 
part and fly away to its heaven of disembodied 
bliss. 

James's answer, in its full implications, swept 
the slate clear of all such dualistic doctrine. By 
brilliant analysis — an analysis pursued with con- 
vincing power by such men as Dewey, Wood- 
bridge, Holt, Thorndike, Watson, Singer and 
others — James showed how impossible it was to 
believe in a non-bodily substance, a " conscious- 
ness " that somehow " ran " the body. Conscious- 
ness, he showed, is not a substance, a peculiar kind 
of being; consciousness is a relation, a way of 
acting, the relation, in short, between a living 
organism and the environment to which it speci- 
fically responds. Consciousness, he showed, is a 
type, a very complicated type, of organic (bodily) 
behavior, and as such can no more be separated 
from the body than the surface of a sphere can 
be separated from the sphere itself. 

All this is increasingly of the spirit of our day. 
Some people decry the materialism of our day, 
meaning by materialism the fact that people arc 
interested in things — in finding them, in making 
them, in making them over again into still more 



Ideals in Philosophy 279 

satisfactory things. They who decry this are in 
the main still at the older dualistic point of view, 
at the point of view namely that it is man's busi- 
ness to have as little commerce as possible with 
the bodily world, that it is his business rather to 
spend his energies in cultivating his "inner" life. 
But the attitude of social and economic America, 
like the attitude of the regnant American philos- 
ophy is increasingly against such ancient dualistic 
thinking. The spirit of America calls for the 
valiant conquest of the bodily w^orld, which to 
America means likewise the valiant conquest of 
our own wider and more fruitful life. 

I cannot here enter into the profound changes 
which this anti-dualistic attitude of James and his 
followers must bring to pass. Let me simply 
say, as I leave the matter and pass on, that such 
an attitude, as it grows among us, will sanctify 
the world of common things; it will give us a 
religion and a morals not, as in the past, von ohen 
herab, but von iinten hinauf, a religion and a 
morals that will root In the everyday adjustment 
of everyday matters, a religion and a morals, in 
short, whose heroisms will be not the heroisms of 
the world-reviling ascetic or the heaven-aspiring 
saint, but the heroisms of the engineer and the 
business man, the producer and the manufacturer, 
the artist and the scientist, the heroisms of those 
who love this world of organic life and who work 



28o Ideals of America 

courageously to bring such life more abundantly. 
And that, I think, will be no small gain. 

I have indicated above that the absolutists 
were interested in thought. Truth, for the abso- 
lutists, was there, eternally waiting to be discov- 
ered, and it behooved man therefore to think and 
keep on thinking. By thinking hard enough it was 
believed, he might some day reach the very arca- 
num itself. Pragmatism, on the contrary, had no 
great confidence in thought. And it lacked con- 
fidence, not because it had any particular distrust 
of thought, but because it visualized the world 
differently from the absolutists. It saw the world 
as a world In the making, a world In which fact- 
truths and value-truths were actually in process 
of being created. Hence it distrusted thought, 
not because thought was Intrinsically a poor sort 
of thing but because no thought, however com- 
petent, could find The Truth, for the simple rea- 
son that In a world-in-the-making The Truth was 
not there to be found. Truth was a daily, hourly 
outcome of action. 

Hence for pragmatism, thought took a second- 
ary place in the scheme of life. In the classical 
philosophical tradition, rooting in Aristotle, 
thought was something good-in-itself. The high- 
est life Indeed was the life of pure contemplation. 
Pragmatism reversed this tradition, joining with 



Ideals in Philosophy 281 

the voluntarlstlc Duns Scotus In the conviction that 
the highest In hfe Is action. Thought Is simply 
contributory to action, a pathbreaker, a problem 
solver, a smoother out of difficulties. Thought 
In short is never In any sense an end In Itself, but 
always purely an Instrument of action. 

It was at the University of Chicago, among a 
group of vigorous thinkers, working together 
under the leadership of John Dewey, that "in- 
strumentalism " — the underlying logic of prag- 
matic thinking — was brought to Its most elabo- 
rate and penetrating formulation. We all still 
remember the electric shock of William James's 
announcement of the discovery of the " Chicago 
school " of philosophy. We are far enough away 
now from that announced discovery to evaluate 
it; and I think that most philosophers would today 
agree that what James so delightedly announced 
as a new and vital development In philosophy was 
Indeed precisely as he characterized It. 

The Interesting thing about this Chicago move- 
ment Is that It has already had most far-reaching 
effects in one region at least of our practical life, 
in education. The new theory of education that 
is sweeping over the country today, carrying the 
name of John Dewey from end to end of the 
land, is nothing more nor less than the philosophy 
of instrumentalism applied in the schoolroom. 
Take for example, the slogan of the new theory, 



282 Ideals of America 

"Learn by doing." Doing^s the thing. One may 
think and think till one bursts one's skull, but 
never by thinking shall one really arrive. Life 
is a process to be lived, not simply to be thought 
about. The schoolroom, therefore, must be a 
place where students actually live through their 
problems. Hence the quiet scorn of these idol- 
breaking philosophers of the futile intellectualism 
of the schools, the wearisome efforts to discipline 
the child's mind, to develop his "thinking" power 
by heaps of meaningless mathematics or parsing 
of the classics or memorizing of kings and queens. 
One need not be a bold prophet to declare that 
here, in this new action-philosophy of education, 
something deeply authentic has been brought into 
our life, something through which life will be 
more vigorously and intelligently effective. 

I pass now to a very different development of 
American philosophy, a development which holds 
itself to be in some respects opposed to the one 
just considered, but which in reality is in largest 
degree supplemental. I shall not be concerned to 
trace out the subtle disagreements of this move- 
ment with the one preceding, but rather to indi- 
cate just what the movement is and how it finds 
a place in our present-day American thought. 

Neo-realism, the movement referred to, is a 
protest against the unrealness of past philosophy. 



Ideals in Philosophy 283 

Philosophy had, by a curiously involuted logic,; 
got itself so tangled up in its subjectivisms that 
it had come actually to declare that thought was 
more real than the physical things about us. Al- 
though the real world was really most obviously 
real, philosophy had so twisted and turned itself 
that it had become timid about everything that 
wasn't born within its own skull. Neo-realism, 
through Woodbridge, Montague, Perry, Holt, 
Spaulding, and others, restored philosophy to the 
courage of the unsophisticated man. It restored 
philosophy to a commerce with things, good, 
hard, physical things. And it set for philosophy 
the task of coming out of its subjectivistic haze 
and tackling the problems of the world about us. 
Such is the healthy spirit of neo-realism, a 
spirit, be it noted, wholly in keeping with the 
realism of our modern American life. For 
American life demands today that the realities 
be frankly and fearlessly faced — the crude, hard, 
work-a-day realities. It has no patience with the 
old timidities, the old sentimentalities, the old 
romantic self-deceptions. In every region of life 
it demands that we know the truth and that we 
let the truth set us free. And it believes above all 
that truth is to be discovered, not by some revela- 
tion out of a philosophic heaven, but by a straight- 
from-the-shoulder tackling of the commonplace 
matters of this world. 



284 Ideals of America 

And this brings us properly to Santayana, a 
philosopher without a school, yet a philosopher 
.whose influence is deep and will be lasting. San- 
tayana writes with fascinating satire of the " gen- 
teel " tradition in American philosophy, the Chris- 
tian, puritanic, supernatural tradition. San- 
tayana is frankly pagan, frankly naturalistic* 
Like the pragmatists and the neo-realists, he is 
at outs with the old romantic subjectivizings of 
philosophy, the old romantic self-delusions. Like 
them, he asks for a straight-away taking of the 
natural world at its word, for an unashamed 
meeting of its conditions, and an unafraid ap- 
praisal of its values. 

But now I find myself at the most difficult point 
In this hasty review of American philosophy. I 
have spoken of the restless, heaven-defying prag- 
matists, of the dour, earth-gripping neo-realists 
and of the pagan Santayana ; and my time is almost 
exhausted. And yet there is Royce! — Royce, 
the master of so many of the m.asters of American 
philosophy. Ought not the major portion of this 
paper to have been devoted to him? Doubtless. 
But the curious fact is that, wonderful as Royce's 
work has been, the major portion of It does not 
belong to present-day philosophy. For good or 
for ill — I speak of course subject to correction — 
the philosophy that made Royce Internationally 
famous Is a philosophy that today Is no longer 



Ideals in Philosophy 285 

in the saddle. I should not venture to say this 
were I not able to record another fact, namely 
that a new Roycean philosophy is mounting to the 
saddle. This is a philosophy that is as yet but 
In the making; but I verily believe that If the good 
fortune Is granted our world of having Royce live 
for a number of years to come, this new Roycean 
philosophy will shape Itself into a form most fruit- 
ful for American life.^ 

Those who know Royce know that he Is one of 
the most remarkable men that has appeared in 
American philosophy, and nothing more remark- 
able has occurred In the history of this great 
mind than his slow but unmistakable growth out 
of a philosophy pertinent to a past generation Into 
a philosophy deeply and splendidly In keeping 
with our more recent democratic life. 

In 1 90 1 Royce published his monumental trea- 
tise, The World and the Individual. In that 
volume of profound metaphysical analysis, the 
Absolute was so commandingly In evidence that 
human personality was all expunged. Universal 
Thought, Universal Experience, Universal Self- 
hood, the All-inclusive Self were the concepts that 
were to the fore In the writer's Interest. Seven 
years later, Royce published his Philosophy of 
Loyalty and marked thereby the rise In him of 

iThis was delivered some months before Professor Royce's 
death. 



286 Ideals of America 

new dominating interests, the ethical and social. 
Three other volumes appeared in rapid succes- 
sion — JViUiam James and Other Essays in 191 1 ; 
The Sources of Religious Insight, in 19 12; and 
The Problem of Christianity, in 19 13. In this 
succession, the ethical and social interests de- 
veloped with increasing power, until in the last 
mentioned, the concept of human personality and 
of the social community so dominated the whole 
discussion that the old Cosmic Absolute was all 
but forgotten. A new type of idealism was there 
developed — the idealism of social humanity. 
Life In the Beloved Community, loyalty to the 
Beloved Community, the striving for the realiza- 
tion of the Beloved Community, these were the 
rich and permanent human values; these were art 
and science and morals and religion; these were 
the be-all and the end-all. 

It Is unnecessary to dwell at length upon the 
significance of all this. That one of the three 
or four master minds in American philosophy 
definitely turned to the social group and to the 
principle of cooperative relationships within that 
group as the expression of the truly indefeasible 
values Is to say that philosophy at its highest has 
turned Its face firmly and convincedly away from 
the atomistic Individualism of the earlier genera- 
tions and is looking with eager hope to the mu- 
tualism of an Integrated, cooperative society. 



Ideals in Philosophy 287 

Having spoken of Royce, nothing would seem 
more fitting now than to mention Howison; for 
the two in their oppositions as well as in their 
agreements stand nearest together of all Ameri- 
can philosophers.^ Both are idealists; both are 
pers.onalists. Both have struck the note of a pro- 
found reverence for human values. But to Howi- 
son it was given to strike early and with brilliant 
power a note which, until recently, was lacking 
in Royce — the note of pluralism. Howison, like 
James, had no use for the Absolute. His mind, 
vigorously alive to the reality of personality, 
would brook no merging of that individuality in 
any Universal Self, however exalted the latter 
might be. The City of God was to Howison 
Indeed a city, a city with citizens who were just 
as real, just as indefeasible in their ultimate nature 
as God himself. To Howison, in short, democ- 
racy was not simply of this changing order of 
things; democracy was laid In the changeless 
foundations of the world. Here again, on its 
highest plane, American philosophy has voiced the 
reverence for the unlimited possibilities of human 
personality. 

The pity of it Is that this gifted mind has left 
only the meagerest report of himself in his writ- 
ings. Nevertheless the vigor of his fight for 

^ Professor Howison has likewise died since this was delivered. 



288 Ideals of America 

idealistic pluralism has left its deep impress upon 
American philosophy. 

Let us pause now for a moment before we 
make our final summing up of contemporary 
American philosophy. We have reviewed thus 
far the points of view and the spirit of five char- 
acteristic developments of American philosophy 
— pragmatism, neo-realism, the naturalism of 
Santayana, the new social idealism of Royce, and 
the pluralistic Idealism of Howlson. Let me 
speak briefly of one further characteristic develop- 
ment. This development belongs to no single 
school or movement of philosophy but in Increas- 
ing measure to all of them — I mean the develop- 
ment of the social point of view. Philosophy has 
had Its day of epistemological absorption, when 
it laid out Its universe of logical and methodologi- 
cal concepts with a devotion as untiring as, to 
the ordinary man. It seemed utterly useless. 
Philosophy, however, has never been frightened 
from great pursuits by the cry that the results 
were "useless." It has sought truth in the high 
places, ofttlmes beyond the vulgar ken. Today 
a subtle but very real change is coming over 
philosophy. Philosophers everywhere are turn- 
ing with increasing Interest to the problems that 
root In social life. In the philosophy of conduct, 
the change from the old introspective, individual- 



Ideals in Philosophy 289 

istlc point of view was marked decisively by the 
publication, in 1908, of Dewey and Tufts' Ethics. 
From that time on, the study of the moral life 
has been, with growing depth and comprehensive- 
ness, a study of the social order In which the 
moral life operates. The philosopher has thereby 
become interested on the one hand in a new type 
of psychology, social psychology, and on the other, 
In a new type of metaphysics, the metaphysics of 
social values. And this double Interest has led 
him to reenter, from a new and freshened point of 
view, his old domains of politics and law. The 
movement Is too recent to report large results — 
a book like Dewey's German Philosophy and 
Politics (1915) or Royce's The Problem of 
Christianity being but forerunners of great things 
to be accomplished. 

But two cooperative enterprises among philos- 
ophers will show the direction In w^hich much 
philosophic thought Is being turned. The first 
of these enterprises Is the International Journal 
of Ethics, which, although retaining the same 
name, has under the editorship of Tufts, with the 
cooperation of such men as Roscoe Pound and 
Bertrand Russell and John Dewey been trans- 
formed, from an organ of the old Introspective, 
individual ethics, to a vigorous organ of social, 
political, and legal philosophy. This movement Is 
of profound importance, for up to the present 



290 Ideals of America 

there has actually been In America no organ set 
apart for the discussion of the living problems of 
social, political, and legal philosophy — a discus- 
sion which the restless, searching life of social 
and political America would seem to make wholly 
necessary. The second cooperative enterprise Is 
the increasingly successful endeavor to unite the 
deeper ranging minds In the legal and the philo- 
sophical professions in the penetrating effort to 
work out for American law, what now It so 
lacks, a consistent and unifying philosophy. 

I hesitate to speak of another Influence that Is 
turning philosophy from her ancient paths of 
quietude. We philosophers have been apprised 
lately, with humiliating force, that one touch of 
war makes fools of all philosophers. Neverthe- 
less, I believe that the war has turned the philo- 
sophic mind of America to a far deeper searching 
out of the fundamental grounds of human rela- 
tionships and of the principles of organized 
human activity. Plato, you will remember, wrote 
his Republic after the heartbreaking tragedies of 
the Peloponneslan War. Is It too much to expect 
that out of the horrors of this world conflict an- 
other and a greater Republic will shape Itself for 
the finer, more enduring guidance of men? 

And so to sum It all up. American philosophy 
Is far different from what It used to be. To my 



Ideals in Philosophy 291 

own mind it is far greater. Chary of absolutes, 
suspicious of transcendental flights, tentative, ex- 
perimental, it has set itself, with a kind of grim, 
rebellious determination, to coming to better 
grips with reality. It holds off old categories; 
it refuses old consolations. It takes its problem 
as immensely bigger, more complicated. It has 
no longer the old ready "yea" and "nay." It 
stumbles and falters with "perchance" and "if" 
and "it may be so." All of which means that 
philosophy no longer stalks proudly on the 
heights. It takes its way in low places; it goes 
stumbling through ditches; it gets down on its 
hands and knees through bramble and brush. It 
is a very sorry sight, is philosophy today! It 
is much more like a ragged, earth-wandering 
tramp than, as of old, a king in royal purple. 
And yet somehow, on the whole — well some of 
us who are philosophers like it m.uch more in 
these days when it is stained with the mudstains 
of the common road. 

And perhaps, after all, in its mudstained days, 
it may be worth far more to America. Fellow, 
again, with the common man, it faces his imme- 
diate problems; it wrestles with his perplexities; 
with him, it fashions its world out of the stuff of 
the everyday things. And this is to say that 
today it is far more deeply and vitally democratic 
than it ever has been before. 



292 Ideals of America 

What the American philosophy of the future Is 
to be Is still In the lap of the gods. I believe 
that we shall witness the growth of a new type of 
philosophic Idealism, a type of idealism that, 
sloughing off both the absoluteness and the sub- 
jectivity of the older theories, will nevertheless 
attempt what they attempted, namely, to base life 
broadly and fundamentally upon the splendid 
human values. To that great work of the future, 
to that great task for our American Common- 
wealth, the philosophy of today is called. 



XII 
Ideals in Literature 



XII 

IDEALS IN LITERATURE 

By Robert Morss Lovett, Professor of English, University 
of Chicago; Editor of The Dial 

THE subject stated, the ideals of literature in 
the present day, may seem to some a con- 
tradiction in terms, for at the outset of the con- 
sideration we are confronted by the fact that 
literature as an art of expression has, in large 
measure, lost its ideals. No longer do writers 
form a caste apart, an institution devoted to com- 
petition in the production of masterpieces, seeking 
like Milton " to leave something so written to 
aftertimes as they should not willingly let it die.'* 
On the contrary, in these days of popular educa- 
tion, everyone writes, or threatens to do so, and 
measures his success not in length of time, but in 
width of space, not by a fit audience though few, 
extending in a thin line down the centuries, but by 
the unfit and vast assembly of readers scattered 
over the whole world who for a week or a year 
may be held by the potent charm of a ''best 
seller." No longer does the literary audience con- 
sist of a group of connoisseurs like the apprecia- 

29s 



296 Ideals of America 

tors of music or painting, instructed by criticism to 
make formal comparisons and praise the best. On 
the contrary, everybody reads, and supplying 
reading matter to an immense and voracious 
public has become a business like supplying it 
with clothes and food. And finally, since the pub- 
lic has become the dominant force in literary pro- 
duction, literature itself has changed in defer- 
ence to its tastes and interests. This public is un- 
educated in appreciation of the art of expression; 
it is primarily interested in the thought expressed. 
Thus no longer do we find writers devoted pri- 
marily to form, seeking subject matter that will 
serve as material for epic, tragedy, or sonnet 
sequence. On the contrary, the writer expends his 
ingenuity and Imagination in finding what material 
will take the public by its novelty or significance, 
and adopting a form which will serve most di- 
rectly and powerfully to convey this material to 
its destination. 

These differences between its position in the 
past and In the present are not peculiar to litera- 
ture. The same phenomena are to be observed 
in the history of painting and music, but un- 
doubtedly In the case of literature they are more 
striking and fundamental. They are the result of 
democracy, felt more strongly In literature be- 
cause literature is the most democratic of all the 
fine arts. Unlike music, painting, and sculpture, 



Ideals in Literature 297 

It is not defended from popular practise by a 
complicated special technique or the necessity of 
expensive materials and tools. It is therefore not 
necessarily a profession but may be a matter of 
casual pursuit. That stanch social democrat, Wil- 
liam Morris, upheld this view of literature as an 
occasional or by-product: '* Unless a man can 
write an epic while he is weaving a tapestry he Is 
no good at all." And not only does this absence 
of exacting technique render literature the most 
easily practised of the fine arts; It gives it also the 
most Immediate and general appeal to the world 
of mankind. 

Thus literature is exposed to two dangers, the 
practise of Its art by the unlearned and the de- 
termination of Its quality by the masses. These 
dangers are not, It Is true, entirely modern. In 
the past there were those who made writing a 
means of direct popular appeal; but they were In 
a measure held In check by criticism, whose func- 
tion It was to defend literature, especially poetry, 
from practise by the unfit and subjection to pop- 
ular taste. But at the present time the aristo- 
cratic standards of criticism are of little avail. 
Whatever our differences as to what literature 
Is, we are agreed that books that are not pub- 
lished and read are not literature. Those who 
believe that the only standards of literature are 
aristocratic, in the old sense of dependence on 



298 Ideals of America 

the past for sanction, will declare therefore that 
our title is a contradiction in terms, and the ideals 
of literature, along with literature itself, have 
ceased to exist. But even if the pretentious terms 
"ideals" and "literature" must be renounced in 
the face of such challenge, it may still be worth 
while to inquire into the tendencies and value of 
public writing in a democracy. 

As I have said, the so-called degradation of 
literature, and the loss of its ideals, are due to the 
democratic demand that it shall serve the uses, 
not of the few, but of the many. Now the chief 
uses which the many have found for literature 
are two, corresponding to the two passions of de- 
mocracy, education and entertainment. And in 
both departments it must be admitted that the 
demands of democracy are still In the elementary 
stage. What Is wanted In education Is a rough 
general knowledge of the world in which we live, 
with answers to questions in the field In which, for 
the moment or century, we are particularly In- 
terested, and some data by which to direct our 
own course toward what we euphemistically call 
success In life. That field of Interest at present 
is represented by science, including sociology; and 
our principle of success is, as It has been since the 
Renaissance, efficiency. Accordingly we find 
literature both In subject matter and form, re- 
flecting these influences. For entertainment, the 



Ideals in Literature 299 

mass of men are dependent on appeal to the senses 
and the emotions, but there Is one form of in- 
tellectual enjoyment which is widespread — the 
satisfaction of curiosity, that emotion of the mind 
which is stirred by novelty. We find therefore 
that the questions which the multitude of readers 
ask in regard to the subject matter of any writing 
are. Is it true? Is it important? Is it new? at 
least In point of view or suggestion. Now our 
standards of truth, as determined by science, and 
of importance, as marked by efficiency for the pur- 
poses of life, find exemplification In the great mass 
of material drawn from the lives of human beings 
everywhere, selected and presented with a view to 
emphasizing reality and Importance, which we call 
realistic. And the demand of Interest Is best 
served by that Instinct for the novel, and particu- 
larly the timely, which Is of the nature of jour- 
nalism. A term then which covers both the 
substance and the technique of a large part of 
present-day writing Is journalistic realism. 

I am aware that the word journalism will seem 
to many a term of reproach, that In fact It is used 
freely to designate the very antithesis of litera- 
ture. It Is clear, however, that the attempt to 
possess the whole public for the moment, rather 
than a minute fraction of It for centuries, Is the 
controlling impulse of the writer of today. It Is 
so in response to the demand of the public that 



300 Ideals of America 

what is produced shall be immediately useful, a 
demand which it enforces by magnificent rewards. 
Nor is it certain that such a stimulus is less pro- 
ductive of vital work than what Mr. Leo Stein has 
happily called " the obsession of eternity." How 
much of the art, literary and plastic, which has 
come down to us from the past was produced in 
response to the immediate demand of the age 
which it adorned ! In adoring our classics, we are 
in large part paying homage to the journalism of 
the Ages of Pericles, of Augustus, of Elizabeth, 
or of Louis xiv. It will be said, and truly, that 
the journalism of these ages was more refined 
than ours because the reading public was always 
the select few, not the whole mass; but this is but 
to bring us back to the cardinal distinction be- 
tween literature In an aristocracy and that in a 
democracy. We need not hope that our art will 
bind future ages In chains of tradition and prece- 
dent, in order to believe In that art as valid and 
vital for ourselves. Those ages may be the better 
for their freedom. " Sufficient for the day Is the 
evil thereof" may have a wider application than 
the merely ethical. At all events, journalism, the 
thing, involving an Immediate appeal to the In- 
terests and a satisfaction of the needs of the 
moment. Is the very vital essence of present-day 
writing. 

The principles of public criticism noted above, 



Ideals in Literature 301 

reality, Importance, and Interest, are obviously to 
be applied primarily to subject matter rather than 
to form, and Indeed it is to material that the 
realistic common mind of democracy first ad- 
dresses itself. "What does it mean?" not, 
"How is it expressed?" is the question of which 
the answer decides, in the first Instance, the ac- 
ceptance or rejection of the work. Indeed, the 
annals of recent criticism are full of Instances of 
astounding success won in despite of every canon 
of form and style. Yet such examples tend to 
prove, not that form and style are dead, past, and 
useless, but only that the canons which defined 
them are so — that in fact the structural forms 
of literature in the large, and the devices of style 
in detail, are only infinitely more vital, capable of 
vastly more adaptation and variation than we 
thought. To say that modern writing subordi- 
nates form to subject matter is merely to say that 
it has restored the original relation between the 
two. The primitive forms of literature, the 
ballad, the epic, the lyric, the drama, the sermon, 
the tale were not there until the need of expressing 
certain thoughts called them into being. True, 
during the centuries when the control of litera- 
ture, as of society, was aristocratic, they achieved 
an authority comparable to that of the social dis- 
tinctions of feudalism. Criticism defined them 
minutely, and fixed the type of material appro- 



302 Ideals of America 

priate to each. So late as the middle of the last 
century we find the youthful Matthew Arnold 
gravely considering the limitations which the con- 
cept of great poetry put upon subject matter, de- 
ciding that such matter could be found only in 
the past — and, it may be added, turning to jour- 
nalism as the medium of social criticism of his 
own world. 

At present, the concepts poetry, drama, novel, 
exercise no such authority. The sincere writer 
finds the form which affords the greatest oppor- 
tunity of expression and reenforcement of his 
theme and treats it with that end in view. If 
he chooses the drama, he will care nothing about 
the unities or the concept of the well-made play. 
He will, however, be alert to take advantage of 
the unique opportunities of the stage as a means 
of giving power and emotional appeal to his 
theme. As an elementary fact, for example, he 
will recognize that he Is working In a medium of 
three dimensions, not, as the narrative writer, In 
one. It Is true, his public may know nothing of 
these considerations In the abstract, and further 
may be accustomed to seeing the stage 

Defamed by every charlatan, 
And soil'd with all ignoble use. 

Yet if the use of the stage by the author really 
gives to an important theme an emphasis which 



Ideals in Literature Z03, 

it could have in no other form, the public must 
be conquered. The so-called renaissance of the 
drama is due to the discovery by Ibsen and his 
successors that the stage is not limited by its tech- 
nique to a certain kind of subject matter, but may 
deal effectively with the important and immediate 
realities of modern existence. 

What we may almost call the renaissance of 
poetry is due to the same discovery, not merely 
through the repudiation of so much of the con- 
ventional technique of poetry by the professors 
of " free verse," but also through the amplifica- 
tion and ease of control of that technique attained 
by such poets as John Davidson and John Mase- 
field, and through its enlargement by such as 
Francis Thompson and William Vaughn Moody. 
These men are genuinely modern in their recog- 
nition of the proper relation of substance and 
form. 

The novel, owing to its hybrid origin and bour- 
geois history, has never suffered from the obses- 
sion of sacrosanctity. Fortunately no one has 
ever known exactly what a novel is. Yet certain 
technical principles of plot-establishment, back- 
ground-development and character-drawing have 
been held to constitute a technique of the novel. 
Characteristic of the modern attitude is Mr. 
Wells, in his transition from Ann Veronica 
to Mr, Britling Sees It Through, proclaiming 



304 Ideals of America 

Laurence Sterne the greatest of English novelists 
because he most insolently flouted the technique 
of the novel. Mr. BritUng is an example of the 
prose narrative, which most readers do not dis- 
tinguish from the novel, but which by its disre- 
gard of novelistic conventions approaches infi- 
nitely closer to life, and lays emphasis with 
infinitely more exactness upon its overwhelming 
and tragic facts. Naturally the Great War has 
given birth to many such works, narratives of 
a reality so stark and terrible that the reenforce- 
ment of fiction, as in the great war novels of the 
past — JVar and Peace, and La Debacle — would 
be an impertinence. Le Feu and The Backwash 
of War may be taken as examples. But even 
before the war such books were recognized as 
among the most powerful examples of modern 
realism, e. g.. No. 5 John Street, The Ragged- 
Trousered Philanthropists, Children of the Dead 
End. It may in general be declared that the 
vitality of a form of literature in the present day 
consists in its flexibility and freedom of adaptation 
to the infinitely various needs and uses of life. 

So far I have spoken of contemporary litera^ 
ture in two aspects, subject matter and structural 
form. There is another aspect which will seem to 
the apologists for what they call in proud humility 
*'mere literature," of at least equal importance — 
that is, those devices of expression in detail, pecu- 



Ideals in Literature 305 

liar to the individual, which are known as style. 
Now the same principles which I have mentioned 
before, reality, importance, and interest, apply to 
style as to material and form. That style which 
serves best to reveal the subject as it really is, 
and with true emphasis upon its value to life, is 
unquestionably that which is most efficient for 
modern purposes. But the third principle of in- 
terest is clearly of great application in this field, 
as a reenforcement to the other two. By the 
personal reaction of the writer, which is the es- 
sence of style, the subject matter, even though 
remote and difficult, may be made immediate and 
insistent to others as it is to himself, the old may 
be freshened and given the appeal of the new. 
By the arousing and vivifying power of style, 
literature is enabled to do its work of education. 
And it is also clear that in imparting interest to a 
theme, the principle of timeliness in style is of 
great moment. To speak the language of living 
men has been the aim of modern writers from the 
time of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads — an aim 
haltingly and confusedly pursued with many dis- 
gusted reactions, but becoming clearer in the 
present day, as the true sources and the great need 
of power through intellectual leadership in democ- 
racy are more clearly discerned. By this jour- 
nalism in style, it is needless to say that I do not 
mean writing like newspaper reporters. I may 



3o6 Ideals of America 

point out, however, that the secrets of power of 
the written word, the power of vivid portrayal 
through detail, of passionate utterance, of the 
convincing logic of events, of clarifying explana- 
tion, and of winning persuasion, are to be learned 
not in the old schools of pulpit, bar, and assembly, 
nor in the academic classroom, with its traditions 
of aristocratic formalism, but in the modern 
school afforded by the daily newspaper and the 
weekly and monthly magazine. The public is 
the best teacher; it is a pity that those who attend 
its school as pensioners often learn so badly. 

I have hitherto spoken of literature in a democ- 
racy as one of the useful arts, with functions 
primarily of education and entertainment, and it 
would be useless to deny that such it has, by force 
of events, become. Our culture is literary. In the 
attempt to diffuse culture widely among men, 
literature must inevitably sacrifice its high places 
to the plain. Suppose our culture were musical 
instead of literary, would not music suffer the 
same vulgarization? But there are some who in- 
sist that true literature is a fine art, that it has 
nothing to do with useful education and trivial 
entertainment, that its function is to afford a 
medium for the creation of true beauty, that so 
far as it does not this it is not literature at all 
but what Hamlet was reading — w^ords, words, 
words. I have made it clear, I think, that I do 



Ideals in Literature 307 

not share this view if by it is implied that in 
literature the artist may profitably put before him- 
self an ideal of pure beauty, and aspire toward it 
consciously by the means which it offers. Those 
means are now too much the common possession 
of man, too much a social product, to give him 
that exclusive sense of control which Is necessary 
to the pure artist who lives In his own dream of 
the world. But I should be far from denying 
that literature Is still a fine art, and that in Its 
production of beautiful things it realizes Its 
highest function toward men, to train them in 
appreciation of beauty and to afford them pleasure 
by Its contemplation. As In all education so in the 
artistic, as In all entertainment preeminently so In 
aesthetic, Is literature best fitted to serve modern 
men. Only I deny that the artist can render this 
service by devotion to an aristocratic formula of 
his ancestors, or of his social equals, or of his 
own. Indeed it may be questioned whether litera- 
ture as a fine art was not always, except In cases 
of sheer imitation, the unsought result of an un- 
fathomable combination of the Maker's soul with 
that of his fellow-men — only whereas in the 
past It was only the souls of the few who counted, 
today It Is the soul of democracy. It may be 
questioned whether the other so-called fine arts 
have not had the same history, and will not sub- 
mit to the same future. But at all events at the 



3o8 Ideals of America 

present moment literature Is most like architec- 
ture, a fine art imposed upon a useful one. The 
common possessions and the practical needs of 
men determine the material and the structural 
plan — to the artist belong the problems of select- 
ing the material in detail and of working out the 
structure with a design of beauty, and it may be 
of giving it fitting decoration. Because he works 
under the limitations of his human service, is he 
less an artist? His aesthetic is new and constantly 
changing, as the life about him changes. 

Naturalism, impressionism, symbolism, imag- 
ism, mysticism, come and go — "a dust of sys- 
tems and of creeds." It is hard to predict which de- 
vices among so many will survive the day which 
called them forth. Only this is certain, the true 
aesthetic cannot be imposed from without by indi- 
vidual caprice or vision, nor can it be recovered 
from the past by study. The laws of beauty were 
not given along with the Ten Commandments. 
The true aesthetic is the result of human need, 
human aspiration, human agony. It cannot be 
complete unless it takes account of the human ex- 
perience of the entire race, in which today for the 
first time in the world's story the soul of man Is 
tragically one. 



XIII 
Human Progress 



XIII 
HUMAN PROGRESS 

By Allen B. Pond, President City Club of Chicago, igi4-i6 

DURING the first century of our national life, 
in spite of sundry political and financial 
crises and in spite of the severe strain of the Civil 
War, the predominant mood of the average 
American was one of unquestioning optimism. 
Mankind was making progress; civil liberty and 
political liberty were being established; economic 
liberty was taken for granted. The direct guid- 
ance of a divine Providence was writ large on the 
pages of history; by the grace of this Providence, 
America was leading the way, and in the fullness 
of time all nations would follow her example. It 
was seldom that this American submitted his faith 
in human progress to the ordeal of a rigorous 
cross-examination; he seldom attempted to define 
with exactitude just what he meant by human 
progress; he contented himself with vague 
phrases. Of course there would be problems, but 
they would arise only In connection with matters 
of detail. Man's capacity for progress and the 

311 



312 Ideals of America 

certainty of his progress were not to be ques- 
tioned. 

The past generation has witnessed a marked 
change In the American mood; It Is no longer pre- 
dominantly unquestioning, no longer uncritical, no 
longer content to lull Itself with vague phrases. 
America, after the first rapturous ravishment of 
Its virgin soil, has discovered that the measur- 
able filling up of Its domain, and the consequent 
curtailing of unlimited opportunity for the un- 
trained, have restaged in the New World many 
of the perplexities and evils that have so bitterly 
harassed the Old World. We are no longer sure 
that we are the pets of Providence, destined to 
travel by a flower-strewn path to the ultima Thiile 
of human desires. We have begun to admit to 
ourselves that we are part and parcel of man- 
kind; that we are not and never can be a nation 
aloof; that, thanks to the Invention and wide- 
spread utilization of space-conquering means of 
Intercommunication, our ultimate fate and our 
daily life are Inextricably Involved with that of 
other nations. 

Then, too, we are beginning to realize that the 
warp and woof of human Institutions and social 
organization are so Intricate that any considerable 
change In one phase may Involve quite Incalculable 
results, and that what bade fair to bring an un- 
qualified gain may bring in Its wake a loss that Is 



Human Progress 313 

fairly staggering In its apparent Implication. To 
Illustrate by a single example: (Requisite brevity 
compels me to sweeping generalizations that were 
otherwise unpardonable.) Let us call the period 
from the beginning of the eleventh century to the 
end of the fifteenth century the Gothic period, 
and let us roughly contrast It in some of Its aspects 
with the modern period dating from the flowering 
out of the modern industrial system. The pan- 
orama of the Gothic period discloses to us a 
welter of life — brawling princes, warring cities, 
chronic lawlessness, venturesome commerce, dense 
popular ignorance, crude superstition, keen though 
footless scholasticism, a searching though bot- 
tomless dialectic, tumultuous emotion, ribald 
coarseness, a vigorous industrial life wherever 
and whenever lawlessness was but slightly abated; 
a craftsmanship wherein the workman was him- 
self a creator and wherein therefore his mind was 
wedded to his labor and as a result of which 
living was joy in spite of discomfort and even in 
the face of disease or violent death; poetry grow- 
ing out of the popular life and vivid with the 
vividness of experience that smacked of the 
market place and not of the study; a worthwhlle- 
ness in the artizan's life that squarely contradicted 
the ruling theology which proclaimed life in this 
world to be despicable and a painful stepping 
stone to heaven — a period, in short. In which, 



314 Ideals of America 

in the teeth of lawlessness and theological pes- 
simism, the craftsman's work was joy, and life 
was a dish well seasoned by zest. 

And the modern period! What of it? Com- 
parative orderliness; lawlessness banished or 
cloaked under the mask of law; wide ranging com- 
merce; superstition being gradually replaced by 
the comforting assurance that, if there be any 
malign powers, they all live " at the back of the 
beyond" and that means of intercommunication 
are lacking; theology relegated to a less dominat- 
ing position and become optimistic in tone; the 
emphasis on life and its implicit purpose shifted 
from a future world to this world; a more in- 
clusive altruism in constant evidence; the ravages 
of disease being successfully opposed; steam and 
electrical energy harnessed and the factory system 
in full swing; manufacture with its individual 
creative zest supplanted by mechanlfacture and the 
individual workman become a cog in the ma- 
chine; trade, commerce, transportation all being 
recast in a similar cramping mold; the ratio of 
employees to employers vastly multiplied; the 
workman busied with a fraction of a part of a 
process and largely stripped of initiative and 
of the zest that inheres in creative work; in spite 
of the deep spiritual experience that his problems 
are now bringing to the worker, labor divorced 
from joy, because humdrum and routine have re- 



Human Progress 315 

placed thought and Interest; life no longer finding 
widespread, spontaneous, and joyous daily self- 
expression in terms of beauty; poetry largely ban- 
ished from the market place and from the scenes 
of men's work and play and become a cult for 
the cloistered and the erudite; the modern indus- 
trial system put on its trial on charge of having 
stripped the workmen's work of its joy and com- 
pelled him to seek solely in his leisure for the 
satisfactions and the zest of life. 

Here is a case of a staggering loss springing 
from a seeming advance. The mechanization of 
industry Is a magnificent achievement of the 
human mind; but we are concerned with ultimate 
consequences, and every passing decade makes 
more clear the need for devising some counter- 
balancing adjustment or reorganization to fit this 
great achievement to social ends. Has man, the 
inventor, like Frankenstein, created a machine to 
dominate him? Or will man, the social being, 
contrive some means of dominating the machine? 
If he does not, many will argue that human life 
has sustained a loss so severe that the mechaniza- 
tion of Industry — brilliant and spectacular though 
the achievement be — marks a retrogression and 
not an advance. Until a way out shall have 
been found, the problem thus roughly stated must 
be ranked as a vital problem, not one of mere 
detail. 



3i6 Ideals of America 

America also dreamed that, having done away 
with political Inequality, she had likewise shut the 
door on class. But the mechanization of Industry, 
aided, perhaps, by other forces, has created the 
so-called capitalistic system and has let class an- 
tagonism In at the back door, while we have been 
placarding the front door with "No Admission" 
signs. 

And so America, confronted by these and other 
social problems that cannot be blinked, has come 
to look at life and its unfoldlngs with a sober 
mind. And now comes the debacle of the Euro- 
pean war. Mexico we had, after a fashion, 
explained to the satisfaction of our political 
philosophy, a people sunk in deep Ignorance, auto- 
cratically misgoverned for years, unaccustomed to 
the use of liberty, the very word liberty carrying 
not an appeal to self-control but an exhortation 
to unbridled license. What more probable than 
that, the grip of the strong hand once loosened, 
chaos would reign? 

But Europe! What of Europe? From the 
outset it was certain that the war would provide 
a stage, as all wars everywhere have done, for the 
display of devotion, unto death, to obligations 
that are the accepted result of status and not 
conceived In thoughtful self-determination, for 
the display of consecrated loyalty to ideals 
whether sound or unsound; that It would provide 



Human Progress 317 

a stage, as all wars between civilized peoples have 
done, for the display of individual heroism and 
magnanimity, of individual tenderness to the 
weak.' But the war has thrown up in sharp relief 
quite other considerations than these. We note 
the reannunciation of the monstrous doctrine of 
hegemony, the right of the large state to absorb 
or to dictate to the small state whose sole offense 
is its helplessness. We note the affirmation, in 
America as well as in Europe, that the virility of 
states and of peoples is dependent on the cultiva- 
tion of the warlike spirit and that wholesale 
slaughter of human beings, when practised under 
the name of war, is a stimulus to the energy and 
a tonic to the soul essential to the highest human 
progress. We note the painstaking forethought 
and the cold calculation with which, in a nation 
that boasts its superiority to all other nations, 
deeds of ruthless brutality are planned and exe- 
cuted. Solemn pledges, not given under duress, 
have the binding force of vagrant breezes. We 
stand aghast. The civilization that we have so 
boastfully acclaimed seems tumbling about our 
heads like a house of cards. 

Let us turn aside for the moment from the 
spectacular and the tragic aspects of this absorb- 
ing drama of human life. Let us in all sober- 
ness ask ourselves: What, then, underneath and 
behind it all, are the standards by which we of 



Ideals of America 



today are to measure the human achievement? 
Is the race really advancing? We talk casually 
of civilization, of culture. Of what do they con- 
sist? And are they one and the same thing? We 
talk of human destiny. Have we a part in de- 
termining that destiny or are we the helpless 
creatures of a shifting environment over which 
we have no control? What do we mean by 
human progress? In these days that so distress 
and disconcert us, it is preeminently fitting that we 
pull ourselves together and anew submit to the 
crucible of thought our estimate of the human 
achievement, the validity of our ideals for hu- 
manity and of our notions as to what constitutes 
human progress. 

The scientists are practically agreed that, in the 
slow processes of time, organic life has responded 
to a changing environment, has taken on more 
and more complex forms, and that in the course 
of this evolutionary process man has been evolved. 
Many scientists and not a few social philosophers 
find in this evolution no evidence whatever of 
intelligent purpose. Even so, it does not inevit- 
ably follow that it is impossible for some creature 
of this evolutionary process to acquire free 
agency within certain limits and in accordance 
with the rules of the game. I am not going to 
undertake to settle here and now the problem of 
" free will." But I am going to assert that we 



Human Progress 319 

all act every day as though we believed ourselves 
possessed of a degree of free agency. 

Very well then, suppose we grant the claim for 
human origins in the interplay of blind, unthink- 
ing forces. The fact remains that, in the stress 
of social contact, the human race has evolved 
fairly well-differentiated modes of thought and 
action which we name "noble," "ethical," "altru- 
istic," and the like; that it has evolved a sense 
of social obligation. Is there no way by which, 
through human forethought and initiative, we can 
more certainly ensure in the relations of men the 
supremacy of what we recognize as social obliga- 
tion, as ethical conduct? If not, our chance of 
furthering human progress is slight, even though 
we may think we see the path it ought to follow. 

Students of psychology believe nowadays that 
the character of a child is markedly influenced by 
its surroundings and experiences, its contacts and 
reactions, and that we can, accordingly, bring a 
modifying influence to bear on a child's character 
by controlling its environment. We have, in the 
Liverpool rehousing experiments, indisputable ex- 
amples of modifying to a remarkable degree the 
conduct of large groups of people by a sweeping 
change in environment. What Is to prevent us 
from materially modifying, on a larger scale, the 
racial environment by reshaping our human in- 
stitutions and social organization to ensure move- 



320 Ideals of America 

ment toward a definite preconceived result, i. e., 
human progress in consonance with the highest 
Ideals the race has yet reached? 

And this line of human progress which is to be 
to us a sunpath leading to a happier dawn ! Where 
Is it to be found? 

Is it to be sought In otherworldllness — the an- 
chorite's despair of conquering this world and his 
attempt to conquer himself in vacuo? Or Is it to 
be sought in vivid participation In life? Is it to be 
sought in a further uncovering of nature's secrets 
and in a still further bending of natural law to 
serve the needs of man? And if In a further con- 
quest of nature, In what way shall we ensure that 
that conquest shall meet man's highest need? 
Shall the test be ample creature comfort and ma- 
terial prosperity for each and all? Or shall the 
test be opportunity for mental and spiritual attain- 
ment by each up to the limit of his capacity? Shall 
the end sought be the state, conceived as an entity, 
for the sake of which the individual shall exist 
and in whose greatness he finds his complete satis- 
faction — no matter how subordinate his lot, how 
circumscribed his scope of action, or how cramped 
and limited his field of thought? Or shall It be 
sought In the upbuilding of a social order which 
uses its every function and bends its every energy 
toward giving each citizen a chance to be well- 
born and then to develop to the highest degree of 



Human Progress 321 

which he Is capable? Or is there some more 
fundamental synthesis which includes more than 
one of these alternatives? 

The anchorite's solution needs but to be stated 
to be cast aside. That door at least opens on no 
pathway to progress, for over it Is written "Aban- 
don Hope." Whatever disaster may await him 
who chooses a vivid participation in life, any dis- 
aster is better than the self-imposed futility of 
meditation divorced from reality. For the end 
of life Is not contemplation, but rather an indis- 
soluble union of thought and act. 

Any solution to be accounted worthy of a race 
of manly men must involve coming to grips with 
circumstances and wrestling with environing con- 
ditions to the end that man may bend environ- 
ment to his uses and may thereby live more 
abundantly. This measurable subjection of en- 
vironment to man Involves an ever-widening com- 
prehension of the forces of nature and the 
progressive mastery of those forces for the service 
of man. To be sure, only the few will " follow 
knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost 
bounds of human thought;" but these few will 
be pioneers not supermen, will blaze a trail for 
millions and will not rest content In an achieve- 
ment for themselves — their "care no more to 
reck of might or right." The world Is having a 
bitter lesson, which points only too clearly the 



322 Ideals of America 

moral that something more Is needed than the con- 
quest of nature by the few and a consequent 
utilization of the acquired knowledge and power 
for the benefit of a caste at the expense of a nation 
of efficient and subservient workers. Once again, 
we find that the privileged few cannot, in the long 
run, be trusted to be regardful of the highest in- 
terests of the many and that science and its appli- 
cation to the processes of life of^er no guarantee 
that, when they become the possession and the 
instruments of the few, those who possess and 
employ them, if only they may be allowed to sit 
" on the hills like gods together," will not be con- 
tent to 

.... smile m secret, looking over wasted lands, 
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps 

and fiery sands. 
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and 

praying hands. 

And, per contra, this means that human prog- 
ress, in any fundamental view, must involve an 
increasing conquest and utilization of the forces 
of nature and, at the same time, a continuous re- 
shaping of the human environment, both material 
and social, such that there will ensue a nearer and 
yet nearer approach to reasonable assurance of 
material well-being, of sanity of body and mind, 
of opportunity for intellectual and spiritual ex- 
pansion, to every child born Into the world — bar- 



Human Progress 323 

ring accidents against which no human prevision 
can avail. In this view the state considered as 
an entity, existing of and for itself and command- 
ing the strict obedience of the citizen — while the 
state Itself knows no obligation and owes no al- 
legiance to Its citizens or to other states or even 
to Truth itself — becomes an impossible concep- 
tion, because the very essence of such a conception 
inevitably carries with it the idea of " privilege " 
peculiar to those who manipulate the mechanism 
of the state. And all history shows that the path 
of "privilege" lies athwart the path of human 
progress, unless the word "human" be wrested 
from Its true sense and be made to connote an 
oligarchy or a caste. Are we not driven then to 
the conclusion that human progress Is to be sought 
in the upbuilding of a social order which shall 
exist, not In and for Itself, but because only 
through a social order can we hope to secure an 
opportunity for each individual to be well-born 
and to develop In body, mind, and spirit to the 
highest degree of which he Is capable — a social 
order to which every citizen recognizes his obliga- 
tion not for the sake of the order as such. In any 
passing phase of form, but because only through 
a social order, one which has not finally crystal- 
lized, can humanity hope to approach Its ideal 
perfection? In the functioning of men In such 
a social order, the conquest of knowledge, the 



324 Ideals of America 

measurable subjection of natural laws to human 
will, the molding of environment, the achievement 
of sound health as something to be taken for 
granted and of creature comfort and economic 
independence for every citizen, will be seen to 
require pari passu an expanding consciousness of 
social obligation, a deepening, not a relaxing, 
sense of ethical values, a more and more widely 
spread ability on the part of individuals to " see 
life steadily and see it whole," and, so seeing, 
to hold as a vivid working creed the deep con- 
viction that 

All are needed by each one; 
Nothing is fair or good alone. 

I do not minimize the bewildering complex of 
human life and the puzzling intricacy of its un- 
foldings in history; I do not shut my eyes to the 
tragedy of it; but I submit that, In the long, slow, 
painful years that have witnessed its unfolding, 
the splendor of the achievement far outweighs 
the tragedy. And I further submit that a sane, 
clear, wide-ranging view does indeed show that 
progress toward the ideal that I have set forth 
is written on man's history. If we keep this ideal 
and this faith clearly before our minds, shall we 
not bear with some measure of equanimity the 
buffeting of trying times, distant as the goal may 
be? 



C 310 88 






O. * « 








HECKMAN 
BINDERY INC. |§| 

^^ AUG 88 

N. MANCHESTER, 



